Sarah Jane Richards

These paintings are in response to ideas around how humanity can co-exist with nature -  searching for a harmony between the manmade and the natural. My buildings are impossible or improbable. Perched up high, they balance on legs far too thin to support their weight and although they have doors and windows they have no obvious way of getting up to them. Or they lay hidden in the undergrowth, a refuge or bunker. Perhaps they are not meant to be inhabited. They connect with the nostalgia of childhood, of treehouses and dens but are maybe abandoned, perhaps even sinister. For me they feel like safe spaces, swallowed by the trees and nestled in foliage.