"The relationships of artists and their gardens are investigated in this special online virtual exhibition at Pepney Gallery. The emotional attachment of the artist to the garden, through themes such as children’s art, seclusion, spirituality and sexuality. It explores not only innocent pleasures but also the more painful thoughts and memories that gardens can evoke.
Gardens have inspired artists in many ways, not least directly in the case of those who painted, photographed or administered some other creative expression of their own plots. The history of gardens being the main focal point of subject matter in art is a well know concept.
The subject of gardens and their memories that have been associated with artists or artists’ communities relates to the horticulture of the art. Some are better matched than others (Rubens and his gardens are difficult imaginatively to re-construct; others, such as Monet’s at Giverny have been meticulously conserved), but the real point of interest is the artists’ devotion to gardens and gardening, whether there was a direct correspondence with their art or not. The Secret Spaces that Inspired Great Art, is indicative of this aspect: it is not about a direct correlation of garden to art, but of a “secret space”, that is, of a subliminal, almost inaccessible neural connection to an earthy plot, that is place where artistic enterprise is born for the artists recorded here". (c) Pepney Gallery
