Miranda Boulton: Chain of Flowers exhibition – Colman Project Space, Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery

Chain of Flowers, an exhibition of new oil paintings by Cambridge-based artist Miranda Boulton will open at Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery this May. Boulton’s practice explores ideas around memory and time, referencing the traditions of still life painting and abstraction with a mixture of vigorous and delicate marks.

In preparing this exhibition, Boulton researched the influential British still life painters Emily Stannard (1802-1885) and her niece Eloise Stannard (1829-1915), who were both prominent members of the Norwich Society of Artists, one of the biggest 19th century British art movements outside of London. Despite coming from artistic families both faced systemic challenges to pursue careers as painters. During the 1820’s, Emily Stannard travelled to the Netherlands to study the paintings of Jan Van Huysum, receiving permission to copy his work at Trippon House (now the Rijksmuseum), where her copies were praised for their accuracy by the Museum Director. Boulton recently retraced Emily Stannard’s journey, examining Van Huysum’s and other related works at the Rijksmuseum.

Following this trip, she created an initial series of oil paintings on paper before moving to canvas. Boulton intentionally avoids direct referencing, preferring to respond to the memory of the original painting, allowing intuition and spontaneity to guide the final composition. In direct contrast to the highly detailed style of the 17th-century Dutch Golden Age of Painting, a reference Boulton cites, she uses thick impasto oil paint, layered and pushed around the canvas, often utilising spray paint to partially obscure the underlying imagery. Paint is built up and scraped back, and different marks are used: large blurry gestures, ribbon-like brushstrokes, intricate details and soft buttery spray paint. The finished paintings retain an oblique feel of the original source, gently nudging association. They reveal themselves to the viewer through the speed and rhythm of the marks. As meditations on the history of art, they create a ‘chain of flowers’ passed between generations of artists, shining a light on the past in the present.

Garlands and Wreaths II – Miranda Boulton, Courtesy of the Artist and Patricia Fleming Gallery