Claire Scott @ Twenty Twenty Gallery

“In September 2019 I spent some time drawing at Wildegoose Nursery, South Shropshire, an exquisite garden surrounded by a high, red brick wall.

This experience became unexpectedly rich with metaphor during Lockdown when I was barred from the hills I love and felt cut off from the horizon. I dug into my walled garden memories and the remembered emotion of being constrained within a gorgeous, secret world.

The tangle of my family’s noise and the narrowed parameters of our lives found expression as I painted. So did the ever-present anxiety of pandemic. Light and shade, always.

Several titles have been taken from the garden section of The Song of Songs where the intimacy of lovers is used as metaphor for divine love; “The Winter is past”, “Love is as Strong as Death”, “The Season of Singing has Come”.