Composition

‘I’m interested in how we read images, how little is enough to be legible, how reflections can act as light and memory. By using paint, I can give those side-glances a moment of slow attention. By using photography, I can capture them.’

This two-volume publication from Shirley Irons brings together an overview of the artist’s paintings to date, alongside multifaceted reflections on art, artmaking, and landscape through a selection of her short essays and stories. Irons’s subtle oil paintings of landscape fragments and urban interiors are based on photographs taken as she moves through the world, blending realistic details with abstract applications of paint to explore how much information is necessary to render an image legible.

The first volume presents a collection of the artist’s paintings made between 1988 and 2019, many of which depict transitory spaces – such as highways, airports, and hallways – appearing vacant and aloof. These fleeting landscape scenes, often capturing the perspective of someone on the move, give meditative attention to side-glances and everyday objects. The second volume marks a turning point in Irons’s process prompted by the pandemic lockdown, presenting still life scenes painted from observation. Alongside this quiet collection of paintings are the artist’s own writings considering the nature of looking and the genre of still life with both insight and humour.