Jasmine Mowbray

Says Jasmine Mowbray of this work, "'Desire Lines' combines a meandering grid of pumice stone (volcanic glass) suggesting pathways taken by tendrils, with negative spaces opening out towards the centre. I was thinking about an urban kind of Art Nouveau stained glass and was excited when the central motif appeared, marking the completion of the work."

Mowbray's paintings are built through slow acts of layering, scraping, staining and removal; oil, acrylic, pumice, and mixed media absorb into or resist the surface, positive and negative space continually exchanging roles. Construction grids become supports for climbing weeds; reflections collapse sky and earth onto a single surface. Many forms surface through pareidolia — the mind's tendency to find images within ambiguity — arising not from a preconceived end, but from the process itself. Rather than referencing a particular place, the paintings construct landscapes assembled from experience, imagination and accumulated looking.