dialogue
Phoebe Evans | Artist
May 2025
7 min read
Step into Phoebe Evans's artistic realm, where each canvas becomes a gateway to personal memories and emotive landscapes. In her dialogue, Phoebe illuminates the genesis of her titles, drawn from phrases that resonate deeply with the thematic essence of her paintings. Her art beckons viewers on a journey of introspection, unfolding not just through brushstrokes but in the emotional resonance of her compositions.
Traversing between inspirations found in interior landscapes saturated with memory and the contemplative ambiance of her artistic environment, Phoebe's palette embodies a delicate balance of warmth and cool tones. Her artworks embody the interplay between past recollections and present experiences, offering viewers a profound narrative of discovery and personal unraveling. Through her introspective exploration, Phoebe Evans's art transcends mere visual representation, inviting a dialogue on emotion, memory, and the intricate complexities of human existence.
Photography by Stella Mcgarvey.
Hey Phoebe! Congratulations on your recent exhibition Portals at BlueShop Cottage, which concluded in March.
What initially drew you to this theme, and how did the title come about?
“After taking a step back from my work rather than into it, as a collective the pieces each painted alived in space of mine and doorways into certain rooms that unlock certain memories and atmospheres. I chose the title ‘Portals’ because I wanted to use the transitional space of the gallery to gather these doorways, creating a room of entry points into my life. Each work aiming to transport the viewer into a different realm I have once inhabited, retracing the ghost of that space into a two dimensional format. Portals connect worlds and bridge time and spaces, to create them was to incorporate time into a physical piece, to depict the in-betweenness of the work from the past memories to future speculation.
Portals has been an ongoing theme within my work, the title came the from nature of the paintings. Also inspired by portals we often see in surrealist films. The works become a portal to the past while holding space in the present. Portals show bridges a connection to all to be in the same space when viewing.”
Photography by Stella Mcgarvey.
Your paintings often depict architectural dreamscapes rendered in subtle, monochromatic hues. How do you go about selecting your colour palettes, and how do they serve to evoke particular emotions or memories?
“The colour palette in each piece is chosen intuitively, and instinctively with what I feel suits the space best. In relation to how they serve emotions or memories, for me its about the atmosphere they create. Atmospheres can be diffused in the air through empty hallways and linger. They seem to fill the space like a haze, and colour from the painting bathes my studio in a translucent glow. It helps amplify that and immerse me in the rooms I paint. Colour is sometimes used in reference to those I find in nature that make me feel engulfed, such as a 360 degree sunset by a lake or a silvery sky amongst grey buildings. I also take inspiration from fragments of nostalgic carpet or items that were significant to that space. For example, a pink painting I did as a child that I see when entering a certain door in my flat.
For me, the colours help connect me to the feeling of being in that space and also the projection of how it would be to be there now revisiting. I can’t say the emotions or memories it would create for others but that’s what’s interesting, is what connotations and familiarity others can experience and project from themselves into the spaces and around the doorways.”
Phoebe Evans, Descent, Oil on canvas, 200 x 60 cm, 2024.
The notion of space is central to the body of work presented for your show, Portals. How do you interpret this concept within your practice, and what does it represent within the context of your visual narrative?
“I use lived-in existing spaces for reference, however, I toy with it and shapeshift it slightly to meld into the canvas. I remove certain elements such as light switches, doorknobs or corners of floors at times, to give the just out of reach feel space can have within dreams – as the paintings are not intended to be replicas but phantoms of space that is a mixture of memory, dream and photos. Like ghosts and dreams, its imagery that while may exist in one reality, may not in another. Shifting the viewer out of one space and into another when viewed without conventional boundaries. For larger works, I measure the canvas from the point of view where I’m stood, so the perspective is as immersive as possible.
The paintings depict spaces that I interpret from my lived-in environments. After leaving home, I began filling sketchbooks with rooms, stairs, and doors I pass through, alongside recurring spaces from my dreams. The passages and portals develop from memory, and the spaces shape-shift from my house to the gallery, translating three-dimensional space onto a two-dimensional surface. The space becomes a different version, much like how memories change each time they are recalled. Home is created through the relationship between the living body and a material world, sculpted by time and memory, encompassing both tangible and intangible aspects. As Gaston Bachelard writes, ‘Inhabited space transcends geometrical space."
Photography by Stella Mcgarvey.
Staircases and doorways appear frequently in your paintings. What personal significance do these architectural elements hold for you, and what are you seeking to communicate through them?
“They are passageways and the in-between that both connect and separate. They become a portal of the past while holding physical space in the present. Brief moments of suspense that are the border of different atmospheres, conversations and experiences. The stairs and doorways illustrate cycles of liminality between pasts and futures and the presence of absence everyone possesses. They allow me to challenge perception and explore alternate realities while exploring memory, absence and domestic space.
The emptiness within the doorways contrasts absence with presence. It acts as a vessel—one that invites the viewers imagination to fill it. These voids can be seen as afterimages, faint echoes of memory lingering in the mind. They become portals into past places, into the spaces where memories once lived. In their absence, these spaces become ghosts.”
Photography by Stella Mcgarvey.
Could you speak to the interplay between structure and softness in your work, how rigid architectural forms coexist with more fluid, dreamlike qualities?
“While the form of the lines is often geometrical, the transparency of the paint and the forms illustrated allow the structures to be malleable and soft - as if you could put your hand through them and walk straight past. Instead of approaching doors and walls as fixed or permanent, I reassign them from one context to another, drawing from spaces that left an impression on me. I handle the structures with a tenderness, which is likely where the dreamlike quality of the work emerges. Even as I paint solid lines, the translucency of the walls suggests a sense of vulnerability and displacement. These architectural elements are stripped back, made intimate and personal - translated from memory to the brush, dappled with the glow of color. That dreamlike softness within these portals mirrors the feeling of hazy recollections.”
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