'Strange Weather consists of paintings made between 2020 and 2024. The exhibition title refers to the natural climate and to the political weirdness of the pandemic period, the fear, isolation and, occasional, euphoria, in my case the latter often triggered by nature'. - Eileen Hogan
The exhibition illuminates a period of contrasts in the artist’s life. It shifts from especially marked attention paid to her retrospective exhibition and lecture in America (Yale Centre for British Art 2019), to a prolonged period of confinement away from the studio and without access to the wider world during lockdown and its aftermath. Two intense and unexpected developments followed, the challenging commission as the first woman official Coronation artist in 2023 and a residency at Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny, France, in September 2024.
The exhibition title refers the natural climate and also to the political weirdness, fear, isolation and occasional euphoria of the pandemic, the latter especially relished during brief experiences of blossom in spring 2020 when short walks were first permitted. The work focuses mainly on a dominant theme in Hogan’s work – her intense engagement with nature and in particular with enclosed green spaces. These range from gardens powerfully remembered during lockdown (for example Little Sparta, the garden created by Ian Hamilton Finlay in Scotland and the Chelsea Physic Garden) to a series of portraits of trees accessible in Edwardes Square, the London space local to her studio which she was at last able to visit when Covid-19 restrictions eased slightly and where she continues to base herself regularly through the changing seasons. Two further enclosed gardens represented in the exhibition are the grounds surrounding Lambeth Palace, London, encountered during preparations for the Coronation commission while composing a portrait of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Giverny in September 2024 especially during hours when it was closed to the public.
Prior to lockdown Hogan had refined her unusual approach to portrait commissions, working alongside an oral historian, watching her sitters in animated speech and deepening her understanding of each individual as she hears and watches. The same practice was followed for the painting of The Rt Hon Justin Welby, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. This portrait became associated for the artist with the Palace setting, a ten-acre site laid out by Benedictine monks in 1066, to which she returned to draw again in 2024. Hogan writes in the Strange Weather’s accompanying publication ‘The garden, hidden from the road, has a special aura with its ancient trees, herb gardens, bee hives, lawns, high stone walls, garden chairs reminiscent of ecclesiastical furniture, and wildflower meadows. In her book The Well Gardened Mind Sue Stuart-Smith writes “A garden puts us in touch with a set of metaphors that have profoundly shaped the human psyche for thousands of years – metaphors so deep they are almost hidden within our thinking.” My psyche has been shaped by all the gardens I have known and painted.’
Strange Weather includes studies Hogan made in Westminster Abbey in the early months of 2023, anxious to understand the space in which the Coronation ceremony would take place. She questioned her role: “Why paint the Coronation when the ceremony will be filmed and photographed from all angles? Painting lends itself to nuance and layering, the result of a human being making expressive marks. I wanted to capture how in 2023 the ceremony reflected social and political meanings concerning the monarchy, faiths, the state, and the congregation, all contained in the architecture of Westminster Abbey, itself embodying centuries of change. My challenge was to negotiate a painterly relationship with this highly historical, concentrated event and the key players within it in my own language whilst being true to the occasion.” The resulting seventeen paintings are now part of the Royal Collection and images will be released in 2025.
