“THE UNIVERSE IS IN A CONSTANT STATE OF DECAY AND REGENERATION. IMPERMANENCE IS THE NATURE OF REALITY; IT IS THE NATURE OF NATURE.”

Fragility of presence and relentless disintegration are an innate parts of the natural cycle of life, and in her work Purdey Fitzherbert pays homage to the continuous death and rebirth of the world around her. Attempting to harness these forces, Fitzherbert blends classical Western training with traditional Eastern aesthetical values in order to explore the concepts of destruction, erosion and imperfection. She celebrate life’s transience, shining a light on the chaotic, melancholic beauty of the ageing process as life marches inexorably toward its entropic fate.

Fitzherbert takes influence from the Japanese tradition of Wabisabi, an aesthetic celebrating simplicity, modesty, impermanence, and the fragile equilibrium of nature. Her works fuses deliberateness and purpose with the unexpected chemistry of process; embracing the experimental, haphazard nature of the forces that the universe exerts. 

The compositions are driven by interactions between the pigments and their surrounding elements. By using pigments that come organically from nature, or even hand-grinding them herself from primal ingredients such as rusty nails and insects, Fitzherbert transposes their inherent energy into the viewer’s subconscious. By tapping these painstaking, generations-old techniques for creating paints, Fitzherbert continues her obsession with the human eye’s ability to perceive colour for which she has become known in her career.

 The almost-alchemical, ritualistic process she employs in the studio uses the rhythms of entropy. She describes her practices as, “nature trying to sort out chaos”; a sense of gentle spontaneity developing upon the surface as she works. Fitzherbert balances intuition with acceptance, permitting and aiding materials to interact with each other independently, allowing her to embrace the roles of both observer and creator. 

For Fitzherbert, the process of creation is paramount; but that process is a collaboration with the universe’s underlying flow. The mysterious results, as they appear from the darkness of matter, can never be entirely controlled or predicted, just accepted and beheld for all their innate beauty.

text by Oliver Gordon