“The incomparable beauty of their frail, quivering, yet daring life... The leaden circles dissolved in the air.” — Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway

'Floating Hours' continues the reflection begun in 'Beauty Had a Meaning' — a meditation on memory, impermanence, and the fleeting beauty of time suspended. The painting depicts pewter bowls of water filled with drifting, fragmented forms—petals, reflections, shadows—all caught in a moment of soft transience.

The circular vessels suggest both stillness and motion, like Woolf’s “leaden circles” of the chimes of time echoing from Big Ben ringing out over London. Some forms appear to rise toward the surface; others sink into the depths. These bowls become vessels of remembrance, where beauty and loss coexist.

There’s a quiet tension in the composition: between light and dark, surface and depth, presence and fading. The flowers are like lingering thoughts. This work, like the novel, is a space where time floats rather than passes, and where meaning is felt in its most delicate, dissolving form.

Encaustic wax, oil paint, raw pigment with gesso on board in antique frame. 76 cm w x 66 cm h unframed 96 cm w x 85.5 cm h x 7 cm d