Roam, Garage Gallery, Walthamstow, London - September 2025

Roam was a contemporary painting exhibition rooted in our shared practices of walking, exploring, and recording the landscape. Over the nine months leading up to the show, we spent time travelling, working, and undertaking residencies across the UK. Our exhibition at Garage Gallery was the culmination of sketches, plein air studies, and writings, all developed into larger, considered paintings.

We spent time in Wales, Scotland, and the Isle of Man, with each of us beginning the process of image-making on location, immersed in the landscape. In those moments of stillness, we grounded ourselves within nature and began to unpick the mass of visual information surrounding us. The separation between ourselves and the environment slipped away as a result of working outside for weeks on end. We researched each location - whether local geology, ancient woodlands, or stone circles - as a means to learn about and engage more meaningfully with the places we aimed to depict.

A series of watercolours, paintings, drawings, and photographs informed the development of larger, more refined oil and acrylic paintings for our show at Garage. We each found importance in colour, mark-making, and pattern within our works, using these visual tools to bridge the figurative and abstract. Our paintings became recordings of our experiences, memories, and the joy we found in being ourselves amongst nature.

Garage Gallery, a non-profit community space in the heart of Walthamstow Village, provided a meaningful setting for the exhibition. We were delighted to return and share our work in this space, connecting with local visitors and fellow creatives in Walthamstow.

A group exhibition by artists Octavia Madden, Millicent Evans, and Toby Wills-Hart.