Shanghai Garden, One View Flipped and Repeating: Gardens: Fragments of Life and Loss

Part of the title of this work, One View Flipped and Repeating, alludes to both the process and the artistic intention behind the painting. The work is based on a garden I visited in the centre of Shanghai, where I captured a single photograph. Using Photoshop, I manipulated the image by flipping, repeating, and rescaling it to create an extended, transformed composition. This digital intervention allowed me to move beyond straightforward representation, reimagining the garden as a wholly new visual experience. The result is both a constructed landscape and a layered memory—an abstracted reflection of my time in that place, shaped by personal experience, technology, and artistic interpretation.

This painting is from the exhibition and publication, Gardens: Fragments of Life and Loss – an artistic enquiry that systematically explores themes of memory, impermanence, and transformation through the motif of the garden. Drawing upon visual language and observational practices, the body of work investigates how natural environments serve as metaphors for human experience, particularly in relation to loss and regeneration. The paintings communicate knowledge by documenting and interpreting the cyclical processes of change and adaptation in nature, offering insights into how landscapes reflect emotional and cultural memory. This body of work contributes to interdisciplinary dialogues between art, ecology, and the human condition through a methodical engagement with site, material, and temporality.