RUBY WILKINSON

“If I were to unframe Starter, the stormiest of Ruby Wilkinson’s new paintings, her studio would fill with water. It would sluice from the walls in great big storm cloud drops and fill up the floor like a lake. Eels and fish would pour out the door and down the stairs. Some oceanic current might wash me away too, to begin my new amphibious life. Or maybe it would strand me, like a shipwrecked lover, on some sandy island over the horizon. Who can say. Either way, I know one thing for sure: spilled water doesn’t flow backward...

Most of the paintings in Forward Song are blue, although blue is too simple an adjective, like using the word love for all the things that that word means. Alongside the winter ocean, Wilkinson has poured into her paint pot late dusk, last night, old ink, clouds, bruises, your ex-boyfriend’s nicest jeans, lapis lazuli, a pile of teal jewels, face wash, and the ashy sunrise on a Sunday morning. Blues both sacred and profane. It’s funny,” she said to me recently, “last year I would have been super upset if even a speck of blue turned up in my paintings.” But like something from a fable, one day Wilkinson was just struck while mixing her oil paints. Man, how vibrant was blue. A colour that once felt limited and repellent now seemed open-ended, expansive. The shade had hatched like an egg.”

• Extract from a piece of writing by Flora Feltham that accompanies the exhibition.