Guildford House Open

This was a fantastic surprise on Friday!

I’m so pleased to have my painting ‘Haiku’ selected for the Guildford House Open exhibition!

Thank you to the panel of judges and to @parkerharrisco for organizing the event.

Please see all the details below:

The Guildford House Open 2025 exhibition will take place at Guildford House Gallery, Surrey, from 22 November 2025 to 28 February 2026.

The shortlist was selected by a panel of distinguished selectors: Mary Branson, Kelvin Okafor, and Lizzie Collins, who carefully chose the strongest work from this year’s entries.

Out of 1,290 entries, 86 artworks by 80 artists were shortlisted for this exciting contemporary exhibition.

🎨 The Guildford House Open celebrates artists working across a wide range of media, including painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, photography, moving image, textiles, and mixed media.

My practice explores landscape as a vessel for memory and emotion — a way of tracing the invisible connections between place and self. I’m drawn to moments of atmosphere and light that feel suspended between reality and memory, particularly in liminal spaces, such as the water’s edge, where land, water, and sky meet. Working in oil, I build layers of texture and translucency to evoke rather than describe, allowing the image to hover between abstraction and figuration.

Haiku is inspired by the Japanese lake at Rivington, near where I grew up — a place I’ve visited throughout my life and one that holds deep personal meaning. I return whenever I can, and each visit brings a mix of familiarity and quiet renewal. In the winter mist, the lake feels timeless — peaceful, reflective, and full of life even in stillness.

The title Haiku reflects the painting’s focus on capturing a single moment, much like the traditional Japanese form that uses nature and seasonal imagery to distil time and emotion. Through this work, I aim to convey that delicate balance of memory, presence, and atmosphere, holding a fleeting moment on the surface of the canvas.