Showering’s process begins with the application of distemper onto raw canvas placed flat on the floor, loosely brushed across the surface. The first coats of paint pigment react with this ground, creating fluid, abstract forms in pools of colour. Rather than work against these, Showering uses them as the basis for scenes that emerge through subsequent layers; sometimes suggestive of landscapes that meld her Swiss and Chinese heritage, at others, evocations of domestic scenes or events.

Pentimento – the visible trace of earlier marks that have been painted over – becomes the organising principle for the works, with Showering also rotating the canvases throughout the process as a way of de-familiarising herself with the imagery and a means to find harmony and balance in the colour relationships. Narratives then materialise, of ‘stacked recollections’, in which a simple motif with a particular association or kinship, is overlaid with new motifs, to build the scene as a whole.

For Showering, the paintings occupy the interstice between recent encounter and deep-rooted memory. Many of the works in the exhibition were made during a period of complete isolation. In the absence of intimacy and touch, the artist then found her subjects intuitively, switching between non-platonic relationships and familial ties. Lovers embrace in private spaces. Infants are cradled at family gatherings. Hands reach out to others, conveying a sense of yearning for physical contact.

Water is a recurring motif, congruent with memory – reflective, evanescent, liquid – and as an entity that conceals or obscures hidden depths. In works such as Endless Search (2020), We Stray (2020) and Maisie (2020), the ripples of a mountain lake swirl and jostle in contrasting hues of pink, yellow and green, inculcating the scene with hallucinatory potential. The paintings echo some of the formal characteristics of the late 19th-century works of Les Nabis and the Symbolists, but also in the tender portrayals of domestic life by artists including Paula Modersohn-Becker. Both painters also share a strong affinity with nature, inspired by the landscape of memory and their particular surroundings.

The narratives that materialise out of Showering’s artistic process are simultaneously personal and universal. Most prevalent is that of love, in all its myriad forms. It remains the leitmotif: unconditional, reciprocal or as hopeful projection.