Chain of Flowers showcases new oil paintings by Cambridge-based artist Miranda Boulton. Her practice explores ideas around memory and time, referencing the traditions of still life painting and abstraction with a mixture of vigorous and delicate marks.

In preparing this exhibition, Boulton researched the still life painters Emily Stannard (1802-1885) and Eloise Harriet Stannard (1829-1915), both prominent members of the Norwich Society of Artists. In 1820 Emily Stannard travelled to the Netherlands to study and copy paintings by Jan van Huysum at the Rijksmuseum. Boulton retraced her journey, creating an initial series of oil paintings on paper before moving to canvas.

Boulton intentionally avoids direct referencing, preferring to respond to the memory of the original painting, allowing intuition and spontaneity to guide the final composition. She uses thick oil paint, layered and pushed around the canvas, built up and scraped back. Different marks are used: large blurry gestures and ribbon-like brushstrokes often coupled with spray paint that partially obscure the underlying imagery. The finished paintings retain an oblique feel of the original source, gently nudging association and reveal themselves to the viewer through the speed and rhythm of the brush marks. As meditations on the history of art, they create a 'chain of flowers' passed between generations of artists, shining a light on the past in the present.