“I began this project in spring 2020, and as I painted through the pandemic, ideas about the home felt increasingly fraught. I felt weighted down by absence, I felt the fragility of an uncertain future and the spectre of death. I chose images that reflected this preoccupation with presence and absence. I loved the image of peonies, whose flowers are so splendidly large they can't hold themselves up. They flop over, splay in theatrical despair across adjacent lawns and sidewalks. When I walked through my neighbourhood the peonies recalled me, with a touch of levity, to the messaging of 17th century vanitas: beautiful, but only for a moment; remember your death.

Paintings often live in homes as decor, and the practice of painting has a complicated relationship with that. The aims of decorating, which paintings in homes are chosen to serve, may be at odds with our aims as contemporary artists. But decorating is important. It's a broadly accessible vernacular aesthetic practice that can provide a sense of identification with one's space, an expression of group belonging, maybe even pleasure and delight. Living with Peony Room is an effort to investigate these dynamics. What's it like to live in a painted house? Is it possible to collapse the categories 'art space' and 'living space' to a meaningful degree? Can we (playfully) chase (some kind of) utopia by living with art? This exhibition is intended as documentation of the project: the paintings and the time spent living with them.”