“THE CODE OF THE SUBTLE”
Presenting the solo show of Catrin O’Hara, the “Satellite Exhibition” at Fox Yard Studio
Exhibition dates: 13th to 15th September 2026
Vernissage: Sunday, 13th of September
Meet Catrin between 3:30pm to 4:30pm at the art gallery
The Peony Studies December 2023 – March 2024
By Catrin O’Hara
These three pieces were selected from a series of six studies of a single bloom, which began with a jar of peonies in bud in a holiday home on the island of Texel. The artist chose the flower to work from; during that same stay, a phone call announced the death of a family friend. What started as a botanical study became, over the following months, something the artist did not intend or foresee: a record of grief processed through sustained, iterative looking.
The sequence does not follow the path we might expect. The first study, made six months after that holiday, was created without the artist realising the work was holding anything beyond an appreciation of the flower. The second, made three months later, seemed to arrive at a state of calm acceptance. The third, completed the very next day, erupted into raw, turbulent colour — as though something held at a distance had finally broken through.
Even the titles tell part of the story: the numbering "I, II, III" was given afterwards, when the artist looked back and saw which three pieces had carried the real weight of the journey.
Shown together, the three pieces trace not a tidy progression from pain to peace, but the real, winding terrain of loss: grief arriving out of sequence, outward calm preceding any solid foundations, the heart knowing something important before the mind catches up.
Selling price: £2,400 for the set of 3 works
The Peony Studies — offered as a complete series of three works, £2,400. Not available individually.
For Purchase inquiries, please email us at info@foxyardstudio.art
Artist Statement
Three studies of a single peony bloom, selected from a series of six, trace the arc of a grief the artist did not acknowledge she was processing. The flower was first encountered in a holiday home on the island of Texel in June 2023 — a gesture of welcome to a stranger. During that same stay, news arrived of the death of a family friend she had known since childhood. Unknown to the artist, this blossom would become a catalyst for a journey through the stages of grief that we all face in life at some point. A winding journey that the heart knows more of than the head.
The series began modestly: a pair of botanical try-outs in December 2023, made as a simple exercise in monochrome rendering. The artist did not yet recognise that grief was present somewhere in the work. Three months later, on a single day in March, a variant appeared and was set aside — and then Peony Study II: Light of the World emerged, bringing outward calm: light emanating from within the blossom, acceptance seemingly reached. The title itself carries an echo of traditional religious language, a gesture toward comfort. But the following day brought Peony Study III: Black, Blue and Orange, fracturing the illusion of acceptance and turning the blossom into a smouldering ember of grief. Here the title offers no verbal framework — only the colours themselves, declining to narrativize what words cannot hold.
The designations "I, II, III" were conferred after the fact. When the artist returned to the series, the three pivotal works declared themselves; they were not selected in advance. In O'Hara's practice, the multiplied, iterated, and layered revisiting of a single motif excavates a spiritual meaning that is found, not foretold — disclosed through the sustained act of returning, not prescribed in advance. The curators have described the works as suggesting different vibrational levels of the same subject. The peony is not the true subject, nor was grief the given theme. This is what the artist has come to call 'iterative revelation': the spiritual not as subject matter, but as the disciplined attention that allows what arises to surface in its own time.
Catrin O’Hara, 2026
Hosted by Fox Yard Studio
Location: 6 Old Fox Yard, Stowmarket IP14 1AB, Suffolk, UK