Oil, emulsion, thread and felt tip on wood and canvas.

1.7x1m

The Garden Pentaptych began its life in a derelict tyre factory on the then undeveloped site at Bristol’s Paintworks, with water dripping from the ceiling and yellow mushrooms growing from the carpet. It was to become a 5m long painting, providing the background for photographic portraits of academicians made during Duke Mitchell’s Court Painter Residency at the Royal West of England Academy of Art.

It then became a 5 panel pentaptych, hanging in the artist’s dining room, undergoing daily scrutiny at breakfast, lunch or dinner. Influenced heavily by the life cycle of flora and the theatre of fauna within his garden, each panel is accompanied by a floating portrait – like an oil painting of a revered character hung on wild floral wallpaper. When fully assembled it is an altarpiece to what one might call ‘gardening as method’.

Panel 5 – Blues features a sea of blue flowers.