Whole Gallery

6 January – 18 January

'LOST IN THE GARDEN' - Solomon Bakker

Lost in the Garden - (Gnosis of the Young)

This body of artwork, created predominately in oil paint, explores themes of connection, intimacy, growth, love, trust, and death - echoing the cyclical nature of the four seasons. The pieces range from large figurative paintings to smaller plein-air studies, garden still lifes, and mixed-media drawings on paper, all reflecting my ongoing exploration of the garden as a metaphor for life.

The garden serves as a foundation for all life - its cycles of pollination, sowing, and growth mirror the cycles within our own lives. While human systems - power, ritual, myth - emerge from the mind, nature remains silent, offering a deeper connection to the soul. In this quiet space, we can move through time, balancing heart and mind, becoming more aware of our existence within these cycles.

My work reflects this immersion in the rhythms of life - people, objects, food, and movement all contribute to the creative process. Rooted in the primitive, it acknowledges the raw, unfiltered experience of being in direct relationship with the earth. The garden, like the mind, is a reflection of what we nurture and cultivate. What we sow, we reap; and through the act of care and attention, we express love, time, and our relationship to life itself.

Furthermore, the ontological aspect of the work that I am examining grows into the internal framework of a garden through the emotional body and the cyclical processes of seasonal transformation. This allows each piece in the collection to reflect my ongoing exploration of phenomenology - the lived, embodied experience - and the ways in which sensory perception shapes our understanding of the world. In this context, I offer a scientific perspective on chaos theory, where the garden, like the mind, operates as a complex, non-linear system. It is a dynamic interplay of forces, driven by both predictable patterns and unpredictable fluctuations, constantly seeking equilibrium within a framework of constant change

Bakker