Project Description

30 March – 16 April 2022

Sevenoaks Kaleidoscope Gallery, Buckhurst Lane, Sevenoaks TN13 1 LQ
Monday 10am-6pm | Tuesday-Friday 10am-5pm | Saturday 10am-4pm
Exhibition ends at midday on Saturday 16 April

The natural world is Venetia’s canvas. Her art encompasses ritual, astrology and a sensory connection to the cyclical rhythms of nature, as a pathway to healing, and an expression of her deep love for this precious earth. She creates vessels from clay moulded on trees, and paints with feathers, iron, and organic materials, weaving a medicine that connects her to the felt but unseen.

At the heart of ‘The Spirit of the Land’ is an interactive healing mandala. A spiral of cedar wood from a tree that died, leads to a vessel containing iron water from a sacred spring. Water contains memory and a creative intelligence, and visitors will be invited to stir it and make a wish for our planet.

Venetia offers spaces for people to connect to the stillness within and around them. Slowing down and engaging with the natural world through our senses, brings balance and reconnection, as the mind calms down. Our ancestors valued the plants, trees, and waters, not only for medicinal use but for spiritual sustenance. By making art from nature and bringing it into a gallery she hopes to complete the cycle by encouraging people to go out and look at nature in a new light.

There will be a mandala ritual walk to Knole Park, meeting at the gallery at 3:45pm on Saturday 9th April. (Unfortunately, the walk isn’t suitable for pushchairs or wheelchairs.)

Sevenoaks Kaleidoscope Gallery is as an artist led space by Sevenoaks Visual Arts Forum run by Kent County Council. The gallery is located up the disabled walkway at the back of the Library. It is a short walk from Sevenoaks station with frequent trains from London Bridge, Waterloo East and Charing Cross.