Chloë HoltRCA FRSA

The iris has long been associated with transformation, its fleeting bloom marking the passage between Spring and Summer. Returning to the iris bed in my garden, I'm interested in their shifting dynamic presence as daylight fades and colour gives way to tone. Black Iris explores not just the flower itself, but the way memory and atmosphere replace reality. Working intuitively, I allowed the painting to develop through successive layers, embracing the physicality of paint as a means of reflecting the changing character of the garden.

Mixed media on canvas. 40 w x 56 h cm (Framed in simple antique gold frame 50 w x 66 h cm)

As Helena Attlee writes, “the lemon is a fruit shaped by care” — something cultivated rather than found, carrying with it a sense of patience, attention and distance. In painting, it holds that same tension. It’s delicious fragrance and taste - sharpness and sweetness set against one another. Here it remains whole. Gilded leaves catch and return the dappled light, contained within a small Georgian round frame — something held and treasured.

Oil and mixed media on board in antique Georgian tondo gilded frame with original glass. Width and height 36cm x 4cm

By midsummer, my garden becomes a layered, abundant, knotted tapestry of shape and colour. A single dahlia in full bloom provided the catalyst for this painting, its saturated crimson petals rising above a richly woven community of grasses, perennials and the first architectural seed heads formed by the season's heat. Rather than isolating individual flowers, I was interested in the rhythm of the whole, where every stem, leaf and bloom exists in quiet dialogue with its neighbour. Painted instinctively, the composition embraces the vitality of a naturalistic garden, allowing gesture, line and colour to mirror its layered complexity, where beauty is found not in individual flowers, but in the conversations between them.

Oil & graphite on textured paper. 30 w x 42 h cm (Framed in antique frame 42.5 w x 53 h cm)

Painted en plein air alongside its companion piece, Iris in Luce, this work emerged as the evening light began to fade, allowing shadow to become as significant as illumination in the soft breeze of the cooling garden. As the composition flowed naturally from light into darkness, I became increasingly aware of the dramatic chiaroscuro created by the iris leaves and flowers. Their upright blades and free-form sculptural structures provided an expressive framework for the painting, where instinctive mark-making and the immediacy of working on paper allowed each gesture to remain visible. Created as the left-hand panel of the diptych, Iris in Tenebris explores the quiet tension between structure and spontaneity, where shadow is not simply the absence of light, but an active and expressive presence.

Oil & Pastel on fabriano paper. 50 w x 70 h cm (Framed in modern white frame size TBC)

Painted en plein air alongside Iris In Tenebris, Iris In Luce captures the same stand of irises as they caught the final brilliance of the evening light. Their petals became almost bleached by the low sun, luminous and translucent against the dense, shadowed foliage beneath, where the graphic blades of the iris leaves created a striking architectural rhythm. Working across both paintings simultaneously, I responded instinctively to these shifting relationships of light, colour and form, allowing the immediacy of oil and pastel on paper to preserve each fleeting observation. Created as the right-hand panel of the diptych, Iris In Luce celebrates the transformative effect of light, revealing how illumination can momentarily redefine both colour and perception.

Oil & Pastel on fabriano paper. 50 w x 70 h cm (Framed in modern white frame. Size TBC)