In The Poetics of Space, French philosopher Gaston Bachelard applies the method of phenomenology to architecture in terms of poetic examinations of lived experiences. Focusing on the personal and emotional responses to buildings and domestic spaces, he sees the home not so much as a space of inhabitation, but as a hidey-hole for imaginative day dreaming, and the place where we keep our earliest emotional and psychological furniture.
Many of Jacqueline Utley’s paintings in Mirror Flower Mother encompass a similar contextual emphasis to what Bachelard defined as ‘intimate immensity’. Utley’s paintings are located within a feminine topophilia of gendered spaces that women have occupied for living, working and making work. In Sisters, Flowers, Mothers, groups of women are depicted sewing, sitting, chatting or daydreaming, the ceiling opens out onto a star filled sky whilst a white dove and a bunch of white flowers in the left corner of the composition add to a feeling of contemplative stillness.
