Christina Eberhart – Do you hear the flowers sing?

Christina Eberhart: Do you Hear the Flowers Sing?

1-14 July 2022

The title of Christina Eberhart’s exhibition ‘Do you hear the flowers sing?’ is a reference to the work of Anthropologist Natasha Myers, whose study of our interconnectedness with nature has inspired the artist.  Plants have an agency and a unique intelligence which needs to be acknowledged.

 ‘The recognition that plants are breathing us into being, that their exhaling is the possibility of our inhale’ – Natasha Myers

 The exhibition includes paintings, drawings, prints and cyanotypes.

The paintings are playful celebrations of colour and shape, and a sensory response to the exuberance found in plant life.  Christina Eberhart is exploring and experimenting with how to show nature in art.  She invents or paints from memory, then simplifies and refines the imagery, so that the paintings sit at the intersection between representation and abstraction. The intention is to provide a liminal space, with scope for the viewer to respond to them in their own personal way.

Plants and trees are an absolute necessity and integral to our lives and Christina explores and examines our relationship to them.  Recent science is making astonishing discoveries about the behaviour of plants: their ability to communicate and procreate while rooted to the spot is helped by their unique sensory faculties and strategic choices of colour, light and environment.

For the works on paper, Christina applies a range of methods and processes that lend themselves particularly well to responding and capturing different types of phenomena and natural elemental influences.  She works with plant dyes on textiles, and with an early photographic method called cyanotype.

The artist finds cyanotypes endlessly fascinating because the outcome depends directly on light and water.  She will be showing several in the exhibition, and offering a workshop on the subject during the show for those who are interested in making their own.

Included in the exhibition is a series of paintings and drawings depicting crows and ravens, which add an element of ancient naturistic symbolism to the show.  In the world of mythology and augury there are countless interpretations pertaining to these clever birds, from foretelling death and renewal to a change in circumstances.  Hence they are apt symbols for the challenging times we live in.

Christina Eberhart is an artist living and working in London. She trained at Central St. Martins (2001) and her work has been included in numerous shows in London and abroad and is enjoyed by private collectors.

Drop-in Cyanotype workshop Sunday 10 July during Gallery opening hours.