Pamela Wolfe: The Entangled Bank

"It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us ….There is grandeur in this view of life, [and] whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."

- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, John Murray, Albemarle Street, London, 1859 (1st edition), p.489. 

Gardens have always been central to my life. I grew up in Auckland in a household dominated by gardening, and was surrounded by the rhythm of the seasons.  

Botanical elements entered my paintings whilst a student at the Elam School of Fine Arts (1969-71), and have been increasingly central to my work ever since. I have incorporated plants derived from a variety of sources, including my own gardens over the years. Whenever I begin a painting I recall walking through a tangled mass of wildflowers and towering weeds that bordered a large meadow near a small English village in spring. The air was thick with butterflies, bees and various other insects; it was a sensation that has never left me, and one I endeavor to capture in my paintings. 

The above quote from Charles Darwin's Origin of Species is as relevant today as it was 164 years ago, and his concept of the entangled bank was a starting point for this exhibition.

- Pamela Wolfe, 8 October 2023