Ffiona Lewis’s latest, small-scale ‘glimpse’ paintings, still life in the main, are drawn from her delight in the social nature of ‘the meal’ and all its observances. A meeting over warm, freshly baked madeleines in a London café becomes a moment in time, a social encounter rich in ritual and minutiae.

Lewis works from her studio retreat out on the east coast of Suffolk. The simplicity of her rural life creates a calmness in which she can reflect on her more gregarious urban existence and clarify the ‘glimpse’.

This exhibition represents the culmination of a year’s work - small oil panels, groups of multiple images (moments of trivia tightly knit with others making a whole experience); drawings and paper works depicting a miscellany of table spoils, used condiments, empty platters and fabric fragments.

Alongside her usual domestic subjects, the exhibition shows a group of floral portraits – children’s picked flower bouquets, the urban exotic bloom, the municipal flowerbed; a botanical journey from urban shop, through to the verges of the coastal path.

“Painting is a constant struggle – an exploration, a questioning of
nature and my internal landscape, the un-regarded more common aspects
of the everyday.
Each day is a journey where I start from nothing; the slate is wiped
clean from the previous day and I have to begin again. The choice of
subject tends to be impulsive. What matters is what you do with the
paint. The spontaneous epiphany gives me the trigger for the work with
paint to occur.” (FL)