Henrietta Hoyer Millar @ Long & Ryle Gallery

Fragments brings together an exciting new body of work, executed over the past two years, over which time Henrietta Hoyer Millar has become increasingly inspired by the wonder of the details in the English landscape: the minutiae of nature as opposed to the larger horizons of her earlier work. The current series of paintings describes places close at hand, close to the earth or to the water’s edge; her gaze is turned down towards the plants and thickets rather than up to the horizon and sky.
The paintings capture fleeting glimpses of detail that track the impermanence of the seasons and the rhythms of nature. The viewer is presented with an immediate sense of pleasure as nature’s rhythms fragment themselves into moments – the transient winter light on a gate, Spring raindrops hanging perilously from the tips of branches, a momentary colour in an Autumn thicket – all microcosms of a larger landscape.