“She had a sense of letting go; and as she did so, up rose into the air the faces of the others… they floated about her like mermaids, and sang…”
— Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
Nymphaea draws on the atmosphere of the ancient, hidden pool—overgrown with lily pads and iris fronds—where sky and water meet and dissolve. The painting is both landscape and inner state, a drifting meditation on memory, identity, and the momentary clarity that emerges from stillness.
Inspired by Woolf’s vision of mermaids, moonlight, and dissolving selves, this piece imagines the water as a veil between consciousness and oblivion. Layers of blue, earth, and shadow evoke both the depths of the pond and the vastness of the sky reflected in it. The lilies are not perfectly rendered but more felt-impressions of ethereal shapes surfacing through the delicate surface.
The work holds a tension between fluid lightness and grounded weight: soft, transparent washes contrast with dark, distressed textures that suggest the friction of thought, the fragility of memory. The surface is alive with movement, yet subdued, as if the image is slowly emerging—or vanishing.
Nymphaea is a painting of thresholds: between presence and absence, self and world, light and shadow. Like the fleeting beauty Woolf describes, it floats—delicate, uncertain, but undeniably there.
Mixed media on Arches Oil Paper
131 cm h x 71 cm w unframed
140 cm h x 80 cm w Framed in simple modern white frame floating on mount board behind glass