In the Cocoon Walkthrough

A walkthrough of In the Cocoon

Part of an artist-curator conversation, between Heather Sutherland Wade and Emma Miles, in the final stages of the exhibition’s curation, including highlights on certain works.

23 April 2026

EM: Starting in the entryway, with Embers of Daylight (2026)...

HSW: I have just been so fascinated with the different sunsets I get every evening. It changes minutely. You think you're capturing a mood, and by the time you look up, the mood has changed, the sun has disappeared, another colour has come into play. What is really challenging is capturing a consistent kind of light treatment, because the sun is moving. I just abandon reality. It’s not what the camera sees or what I [physically] see, it’s what I want it to be. It’s more magical for me that way.

EM: These two pieces, Figurehead (2026) and Hills at Dusk (2026) are both of St. Thomas, just of completely different scenes.

HSW: Hills at Dusk is a mountain and landscape, grass and bush, and Figurehead is on the border between Portland and St Thomas. It’s fascinating because you have to know where it is and seek it out. A photographer friend of mine led me to where this was, and I thought, “awesome”. It’s like a secret cove.

EM: I've noticed is a lot of warm tones with these three new pieces.

HSW: I intentionally wanted to warm up the situation since everybody had gotten a good dose of my blues - the blues that bring me so much joy and peace. I wanted to do something a bit more energetic. St Thomas has so much beauty that I’m just desperate to capture.

HSW: [Looking at Figurehead] Did you like the idea of chopping up the sky in these cubes? Or prefer if I had blended it?

EM: I always like your simplifying of form and shape, and how that sometimes creates a patchwork-like effect. That has become signature in your work. In the foreground, there’s more blending, so breaking up the sky into cubes feels quite bold and adds something unexpected.

HSW: And because I like you to see the beauty I see, I tend to think in a compromising way. What am I going to put into this painting that's going to keep you balanced? I introduce something looking as it really is, and then I just take off.

EM: I'm excited to talk about the focal artworks in the living room space. On the right we have Bridge to Nowhere, painted in 2008.

HSW: For an exhibition I was doing in Canada. It returned to Jamaica last year.

EM: We now have it as part of a diptych with Beside the Bridge, painted in 2026. What was the process like for you - revisiting an earlier piece, but not reworking it per se?

HSW: I didn't actually do anything to the old piece, I just used it as a colour guide. I related the same colours and tones to the new composition I was conceiving for the follow-up, to make it a diptych, and that was quite fun. I struggled a little bit with the water and the vegetation.

You took some close-ups of the diptych - I didn't even know that I had created those interesting areas in it. That's why I paint thinking of what others think, see and feel, because it enhances my view. It makes me want to capture what is calming, making sure to capture your mood as well as my mood.

EM: Our exhibition delves into the revisiting of earlier works. While some have been reworked, here you’ve created a new piece to complement an older work, 18 years later. You can see how your technique has evolved with your use of texture, colours being bolder and your patchwork-like forms being more pronounced. I think it's so intriguing to see the two pieces next to each other.

HSW: I’m still liking what I did 18 years ago, I’m not wanting to change one single thing.

Entering the "greenhouse"...

EM: As you enter our greenhouse room, you’re met with a salon-style wall of 18 smaller paintings of varying sizes. On the opposing wall, we’ve taken another approach, allowing for more breathing room between the larger pieces. That wall is one we typically fill with many artworks, but we’ve decided to keep it open. Concentrating the flower works all in one room is also something we’ve done differently for this exhibition.

HSW: I took a drive up to Greenwich one day and there is something about the purple and the blue flowers there that you don't really see anywhere else. That really turned me on to doing a lot of wild flowers, composing them together, whether they belong together or not. I suppose it enhances my view that everything should live harmoniously together.

EM: I like what you just said about the flowers co-existing wild. For me, that works as a metaphor for the wall as well. These are all different types of flowers you’ve encountered, in varying colours, shapes and sizes.

HSW: They're two hibiscuses in there. I've never painted a hibiscus before. It was challenging.

EM: What was the experience like?

HSW: I was just so free with it. I wasn't being impacted by anything. I didn't feel any necessity for someone to recognise what it was. I was just enjoying the colour and the background of it.

EM: We went with Hibiscus Sunburst as the exhibition image, and I think it reflects the feeling you had while painting it. There's an aspect of realism there, but at the same time, it feels very free. I think that's why it has resonated with a lot of people.

It’s also our first time using a floral work as our exhibition image. We've previously chosen seascapes - more blue-toned and abstract - whereas here, flowers are brought together in one room. This year’s exhibition explores trying things we haven’t done before, while also revisiting earlier techniques and colour approaches.

HSW: That mixture of being abstract and being realistic.

EM: I think this greenhouse room really ties in well with our concept of the cocoon. You've created a cocoon within your practice, in the sense of peace you experience as you paint, but also physically within the space.

HSW: A lot of these were done during my healing process. I was just amazed at how therapeutic art can be. The days just flew. I found flowers particularly therapeutic; I don't have to think too hard. They solve a lot of problems for me - composition, and more often than not, colour. They also give me a lot of liberty to remain true to what I’m seeing and to depart when I feel like. I don't do that as readily with my other paintings.

EM: Orchid by the Mistletoe reworked is actually unrecognisable to me, compared to what it was last year. I thought it was a completely new piece.

HSW: Yes, I reworked that one - one of the little buds felt too big. The moment you touch a painting after you’ve done it, you risk having to almost repaint the entire thing, because your colour palette becomes totally different. I can never tell you how I got a specific colour. A lot of it comes from painting on top of something that was already there. There's no way I can absolutely reproduce any of my paintings - there’s too much layering and colour mixing.

EM: I think it speaks to the fact that you’re creating in the moment, not for replication or perfection. When you spoke about the workshop you took part in last year, you described it as not being about creating a masterpiece, but as a learning experience. The idea of not needing to recapture or perfect something seems present in your work.

HSW: The saving grace is I never know where it's going to end up anyway. In my mind, it’s always evolving until I think, ‘ok!’

EM: I think it’s explorative, that’s what's very special.

HSW: That's what I think about it, that doesn't make it “work”, it's just exploring, and that's part of the therapy you get from enjoying colour. If tomorrow morning you wake up and think those colours are ugly, let's work on it. Let's change it.

Looking at the artworks on the deck...

EM: I think what I really like about Fisherman's Boat at Leith Hall (2026) is the shadow you’ve created and how the light peeks through the trees.

HSW: What I like most about it is that it gives it a very graphic feel. I like it when my paintings are graphic - chunks of colour, light and dark, and places for the eye to rest. We have very similar tones in the sky, as we do the sea and the sand, all connected.

EM: They're almost all the same colour, the foreground to the background, but you don't really question it. You can still place where the boat is and it all makes sense.

Something that also fascinates me looking across your boat compositions, is that there's no person there, no fisherman there. The boat really is the character.

HSW: Every now and then, I include a figure, but they’re not really part of my visual excitement. I don’t know why, because I used to paint more figures in market scenes. Occasionally one comes in.

HSW: Monkey Island came back from Canada.

EM: What has the process been like of having pieces return that you haven't seen in years, sometimes decades?

HSW: I’m fascinated by them, because I look at what I did then in 2008 and think, ‘I like that.' I like how I did the sky in Monkey Island. The yellows, the trees, the foliage, the texture - there is nothing that I'd like to change about that and I'm just so happy with it. I think a lot of these paintings, it's really sad for me to see them go. Most of them become a part of me and they feel like progeny; they're children.

EM: I like how in this piece you’ve created these lines that feel perfectly horizontal, and are very bold and fine. They're not as simplified as the patchwork-like style we’ve been seeing in your new pieces. This feels very graphic and contemporary still.

HSW: This piece is very fascinating. A lot of the texture with the rocks, and we have some twigs. I actually find my old work inspiring my new work. I could look at this and actually solve that new Bob Marley Beach piece's foliage on the rocks, a different way. So that's what's valid about having them around me, they actually are still a part of my immediate way of expressing what I see.