This art exhibition is a story by artist Sarah E Shaw about two planets: Earth and Venus - so alike in their geological make-up that they were once called sister planets.
The Waves explores how we came to understand our planetary neighbour and presents the perspectives of these two sisters through quotes from Virginia Woolf’s 1931 novel of the same title.
Sarah E Shaw is a self-taught artist based in South London, working in a range of mediums including painting, drawing and photography. Her paintings reflect the forces of the natural environment on both Earth and Venus, while her experiments with photographic printing seek to find acceptance in imperfections. This exhibition includes some experiments with a new medium, using expired makeup and skincare, from her previous work as a makeup artist, on photographic darkroom paper. This process happens in near-total darkness, allowing an image from a smart phone and some faint light pollution to gradually expose the images, embracing the natural flaws that emerge.
Download Full List of Works
1
Mindscape 41
(2021)
Watercolour on board
21 x 30 cm
2
Asleep in the Garden (Morning)
(2023)
Watercolour and Gouache on Paper
42 x 30 cm
3
Blackwater Arboretum, New Forest
(2022)
Soft Pastel on Paper
30 x 42 cm
We Will begin where we are, here on Earth. I think our home planet needs no introduction. If there’s one thing we all have in common it’s that we have all spent the entirety of our lives here on Earth. Unless you’re an astronaut or a very well disguised alien - well done you.
For all of human existence, we’ve been cradled by Earth’s forests, her seas, her mountains and skies. The landscape shapes us, provides for us, and gives us comfort when life becomes overwhelming.
The steady rhythms of nature: remind us to slow down and take notice. But we are also at her mercy - whatever she says, goes.
4
Crackington Haven, Bude
(2024)
Watercolour on paper
60 x 45 cm
5
Song of the Sea
(2024)
Watercolour on paper
30 x 21 cm
6
Mindscape 38
(2021)
Oil and Watercolour on board
30 x 21 cm
8
Shielding
(2021)
(after Georgio Vasari’s Allegory of Patience)
Graphite on Paper
15 x 21 cm
9
Accepting
(2024)
(Holme Cardwell’s Venus Victrix)
B&W Print on Bromide Paper
11.6 x 16.5 cm
7
Crouching
(2024)
(Lely’s Crouching Venus)
B&W Print on Bromide Paper
11.6 x 16.5 cm
Whilst we have found solace here on Earth, we’ve always looked beyond our horizons for guidance.
Among those distant lights, one has held our gaze for longer than most. We know her now as ‘Venus’.
Venus shines so brightly in the sky - the third brightest celestial object after our sun and moon.
Visible just before sunrise - ‘the morning star’, and just after sunset - ‘the evening star’. She also went by the names ‘Ishtar’ and ‘Astarte’ before becoming the Venus we all know, named after the goddess of love and beauty.
From this distance, she is perfect and ethereal.
But a thick layer of reflective clouds has meant that we cannot easily inspect her surface, leading some to speculate about the world that hides beneath.
10
Evening Star
(2021)
(after Georgia O’Keeffe)
Watercolour on paper
15 x 21 cm
11
Waiting
(2022)
(after Raphael)
Red Crayon on paper
15 x 21 cm
12
Venus XLII
(2023)
Watercolour on paper
53 x 43 cm
As our fascination grew, so did our desire to know Venus more intimately.
Throughout the 20th century, nations poured their resources into exploring her. Sending missions to break through the mystery of her clouds.
So we will go there now and see what all the fuss is about...
Radar images were taken, maps drawn and names given to her mountains and valleys, most of them after goddesses.
As we descend through Venus’ dense, fast-moving clouds, we begin to notice that underneath she moves unusually slowly. It doesn’t make sense. Each new discovery only heightened the frenzy to know more.
From afar, she was still a vision of beauty, but as scientists probed her further, the reality emerged: Venus wasn’t the paradise we had once dreamed.
13
Venus XXXVII
(2023)
Watercolour on paper
15 x 21 cm
The planet’s atmosphere is so thick that it hides a furnace beneath. Heat cannot escape and Venus is subjected to the greenhouse effect, becoming hotter and hotter. Temperatures reach over 400C, and the atmospheric pressure would instantly crush anything that lands there.
Her clouds, once thought to contain life-giving moisture are instead filled with deadly sulphuric acid. Not the warm embrace of a goddess, but an inferno, a deadly trap.
If your satnav leads you astray here, turn around when possible.
Venus, once seen as a sister alike in beauty, was now revealed as something much more tragic.
14
Ma’at Mons (Venus XX)
(2023)
Watercolour on paper
60 x 42 cm
15
Ma’at Mons pollutes the atmosphere (Venus XXXVIII)
(2023)
Watercolour on paper
38 x 27 cm
After millennia of being observed from a distance, and decades of probing, Venus breaks her silence and attempts to speak to us for the first time. Her voice, at first a faint rumble through the thick hot clouds, breaks through like the crack of a whip and explodes into a furious thunder:
“I am not one and simple, but complex and many”
(Virginia Woolf – The Waves)
Her voice hissed as it retreated through a spray of acid rain, back into an era of reticent silence.
She threw a scornful look across the solar system directly to Earth, her sister, with rageful envy. Once adored for her beauty, Venus hides beneath her clouds, ashamed of what lies underneath. Behind the cloak of thick reflective clouds, her surface is ravaged by heat, fissures, and eruptions. She sees Earth’s rich life, her oceans and green forests, and wishes to be like her sister.
16
Venus XII
(2023)
Watercolour on paper
21 x 30 cm
17
Venus IV
(2023)
Watercolour on paper
21 x 30 cm
18
Full Face - £166.72 (Venus LV)
(2024)
Colour chemigram on Fuji Crystal archive paper
20 x 25 cm
19
Full Face - £411.75 (Venus LIV)
(2024)
Colour chemigram on Fuji Crystal archive paper
20 x 25 cm
20
Venus doesn’t pose for you (Venus LVII)
(2024)
Watercolour and makeup on paper
42 x 30 cm
21
The Wrath of Venus
(2024)
Watercolour and photochemistry on paper
30 x 42 cm
22
Storm at Sea/Storm 23
(2022)
Watercolour on Paper
42 x 30 cm
23
The Waves/
Mindscape 35
(2021)
Watercolour on Paper
42 x 30 cm
24
Heart of the Sea/Mindscape 32
(2021)
Watercolour on Paper
42 x 30 cm
Earth, feeling the piercing burn of Venus’ glare, readies her voice to respond.
Earth listens, with the empathy of a sister who knows her own struggles. She too feels the rising pressure, the change in temperature, and relentless storms. She understands what it’s like to be admired for her beauty, yet scarred underneath.
Her voice gathers steadily like waves breaking on the shore and builds to a whistling breeze:
“I see it all.
I feel it all.
I am rooted, but I flow.”
(Virginia Woolf – The Waves)
25
Storm on a River (Storm 29)
(2023)
Watercolour on Paper 14.8 x 10.5 cm
26
Storm at Sunset (Storm 7)
(2021)
Watercolour on Paper
21 x 30 cm
27
Storm at Sunset/Storm 11
(2022)
Watercolour on Paper
42 x 30 cm
28
Storm at Sunset (Storm 6)
(2021)
Watercolour on Paper
21 x 30 cm
29
Storm at Sunset/Storm 9
(2022)
Watercolour on Paper
42 x 30 cm
But time is fragile, and Earth knows her future is uncertain. She could follow Venus, succumbing to heat, destruction, and despair. Or, she could find a way to change course.
Earth reassures Venus:
“We are the same substance, eternally divided”
(Virginia Woolf – The Waves)
Both planets have shared origins, both have been shaped by billions of years of cosmic forces, and both have faced their own battles. But where Venus has already fallen to the pressure, Earth still has hope.
30
Possible Futures
(2022)
Watercolour on Paper 30 x 42 cm
Read More
Visualising Venus
February 2024
Mindscapes - Art & Therapy
November 2021
Commission for Nightingale Hospital
April 2024