Old Soul

Two female figures pose with flowers. Introspective, thinking, and turned away from our inquiring eyes, we are welcomed to imagine their imaginings. Both are poised on the precipice of movement—as though caught in a film still. Their actions before this moment and after this moment hang in the air. We might ponder who these women are, what they’re doing, and how they came to be. 

One figure sits on a stool, slumping forward so sharply she could tumble. Her hair cascades down. Her arms hang, languid, by her feet. This posture of extreme exhaustion, resignation, perhaps even supplication, is intriguingly offset by the balance required to remain atop her stool, and by the contemporary hallmarks of the scene: jeans, singlet, and everyday kitchen stool. Stranger still is the bouquet of flowers in the centre of the image, wedged perfectly yet precariously within the figure’s crunched torso, nestled in the nook between her arm and head. A softened background of whites and greys—a void in lieu of surrounding detail—removes further context or clues. Our gaze returns to the figure.

A second figure is rendered with stunning red hair and delicate English features. Her skin is porcelain. Her eyes are a green wash of the sea. She angles her head away from us. Her penetrating gaze suggests deep contemplation, making her immune to us and her surroundings. A plenitude of flowers obscures her torso. Petals brush gently against her lips, and a butterfly comes to rest at the crown of her head. It’s unclear if she has gathered this floral bounty together, or if the origin of this flora and fauna is the figure herself; perhaps it blooms from inside. A distant treeline and moody clouds overhead locate her in a familiar yet unknown landscape, offering little context or clues. Our gaze returns to the figure.

Summer Aldis and Jennifer Allnutt have each developed strikingly unique oeuvres. Aldis works within the tight restraints of black and white pencil, locating anonymous women—their faces forever turned away from our gaze—within sparse domestic settings. Her work is characterised by a sense of nostalgia and familiarity; presence haunted by absence; nebulous femininity, the home, and melancholy.

Allnutt by contrast, favours the rich colour possibilities of oil painting. In her works, flowers and figures vie for attention as they blend and transform into one another. Her work glows with perpetual fecundity and growth, the beauty of the natural world, and recalls the Baroque through dramatic light and shadows. 

However, it is the similarities between Aldis’ and Allnutt’s two bodies of work, ‘Old Soul’ and ‘Florescence,’ that animate this twinned show. Both artists pursue realism through finely rendered detail, calling to mind the Northern Renaissance artists who first mastered such intimate and compelling detail as the reflection of light upon a pearl necklace. Their investigations of the female form draw them into conversation with an even longer lineage of artists, stretching back to the marble sculptures of Classical Antiquity. Narrative intrigue pulls them closer to the present, opening up conversations with such exquisite and remarkable scenes as those crafted by Dorothea Tanning and Cindy Sherman. Meanwhile, vast allegorical possibilities, gestured toward through snakes and butterflies, fallen chairs and cemetery stones, recollect artists from across the Western canon. 

Working within an intoxicating and illuminating art history, Aldis and Allnutt lure us in to admire the precision of their paintbrush and pencil. Once there, their artworks create a space for imagination and storytelling—to create worlds for these unknown women and to divine messages and meaning for ourselves. Most importantly, ‘Old Souls’ and ‘Florescence’ reward long, laborious looking, luxuriating and dreams.