Heather Duncan: PLACES WE REMEMBER
An exciting Solo Exhibition of new work by Heather Duncan
1st – 23rd October
Oil on board 63cm x 87cm framed
Heather Duncan returns with a new collection of expressive oil paintings that explore memory, place and the emotional landscapes we carry with us.
Heather’s paintings have a distinctive ability to feel both immediate and familiar. Her expressive handling of colour, layered surfaces and fragments of recognisable forms create worlds that seem to hover somewhere between reality and recollection. Her work is never simply a depiction of a place; instead, each painting becomes an invitation to remember, imagine and discover.
Heather’s paintings are always eagerly anticipated, with collectors returning time and again to see her latest work. Although unmistakably her own, no two paintings are alike. Each has its own character, atmosphere and story, allowing viewers to bring their own experiences and memories to the work.
This new exhibition continues that journey, turning towards the places, moments and sensations that remain with us long after we have left them.
‘The Old House’ evokes the enduring presence of a familiar place. Heather reduces architecture to its essential shapes and textures, allowing the building to emerge almost like a memory from the layers of paint. There is a sense of history within the work, but also of imagination: the house becomes less a specific building and more a place that we might recognise from our own past.
In ‘Feeling Nostalgic’, Heather explores the elusive nature of memory itself. Rather than recreating a particular moment literally, she allows colour, fragments and texture to suggest how memories are actually experienced – incomplete, shifting and often unexpectedly vivid. The painting has a warmth and emotional openness that encourages us to consider the places and times we each find ourselves returning to.
‘Castles’ demonstrates Heather’s extraordinary ability to transform landscape and architecture into something almost dreamlike. Strong blocks of colour and heavily worked surfaces build a complex landscape in which towers, walls and distant structures appear and disappear within the painting.
There is a sense of archaeology in the work – of old structures embedded within the landscape and altered by time, yet Heather avoids telling us exactly what we are looking at. Instead, the painting unfolds gradually. A shape becomes a building; a mark becomes a pathway; a colour suggests a distant wall or a remembered view. The viewer is encouraged to make their own connections.
Across the exhibition, Heather continues to combine her familiar expressive use of colour and texture with a remarkable sense of freedom. Layers are built, scraped back and rediscovered. Recognisable forms sit alongside abstract marks, creating paintings that reward both an immediate emotional response and a much longer look.
What makes Heather’s work so compelling is this balance between recognition and mystery. We may see a house, a castle, a landscape or a remembered place, but the painting never gives us the whole story. Instead, it leaves space for our own.
These are paintings about places we have known, places we have imagined, and places that stay with us.
EXHIBITION WORK
