STACEY GLEDHILL

Stacey Gledhill is a New Zealand-born painter based in Oxford, UK, working in oils on linen, wood, and paper. Trained in the figurative tradition at London Fine Art Studios, her practice is rooted in close observation, and in the belief that paying attention is itself a form of love.

Leaving New Zealand and moving to London at a formative age brought about a sense of displacement that still resonates, and set in motion a lifelong inquiry into our collective relationship to nature, the role of nostalgia and longing, and our continued navigation of this connection.

Her latest work begins in the home garden.  Moving from direct observation to a more inventive approach - feeling, imagined colour, abstraction - the paintings use the garden's natural cycles of growth, decay, and return as a way of thinking about the larger changes pressing on all of us.  They are paintings made in uncertain times, and they propose a form of hope that doesn't look away from difficulty: not the hope of endless bloom and growth, but one that includes death and the cycle of renewal itself as a way to think about our lives and societal shifts.

Gledhill also teaches oil painting, finding in teaching another expression of attention and care that her own work requires.   She believes that in a world embedded with distraction, choosing to turn one's full attention to what is close is, in itself, a quietly radical act.