Dean Home: Garden of Flowing Water

In Dean Home's paintings, still life becomes a theatre of memory. Flowers, bowls, stones, shells, brushes and painted vessels gather in sumptuous profusion, yet beneath their abundance lies a profound quietness. These richly layered worlds are at once intimate and expansive, meshing the traditions of still life and landscape to create spaces where objects seem to carry histories beyond their material presence. Home's compositions are carefully orchestrated, each element placed with a refined sensitivity to scale, light, texture and form, so that the familiar becomes poetic, enigmatic and newly charged.

There is something distinctly Baroque in the theatricality of these works. Luxuriant peonies and roses press towards the picture plane; light catches porcelain, shells and polished surfaces; objects accumulate with an almost extravagant generosity. Yet Home's drama is never simply decorative. The stones, shells, brushes and vessels that populate these paintings become repositories of memory and meaning.  The grand gestures of his brushwork are held against passages of moments of stillness and restraint, creating a visual rhythm in which exuberance and contemplation continually meet.

At the centre of many compositions are Chinese ceramics and chinoiserie vessels that function as far more than decorative motifs. These bowls become pictorial worlds in their own right, carrying landscapes of mountains, water, mist and rain across their curved surfaces. Home renders these embedded narratives with extraordinary sensitivity, encouraging the eye to move between the painted landscape contained within the vessel and the larger painted world that surrounds it. The bowl becomes simultaneously object and image, container and landscape. Through this subtle slippage between realities, Home creates a space where the physical world opens onto memory, imagination and cultural inheritance.

The calligraphy brushes that frequently appear throughout the exhibition reinforce this dialogue between object and image. They are both subjects and symbols: tools of making that quietly acknowledge the act of painting itself. Their strong linear forms punctuate the compositions, directing the viewer's gaze while drawing attention to gesture and mark-making. In turn, Home's own painterly approach moves effortlessly between meticulous observation and expressive freedom, revealing an artist deeply invested in the possibilities of paint as both description and emotion.

Mountain imagery resonates throughout the exhibition with particular significance. Traditionally associated in Chinese philosophy with virtue, wisdom and steadfastness, mountains are often paired with water, which embodies adaptability, movement and change. Home draws upon these symbolic associations without becoming bound by them. Rain, mist and flowing water become not simply picturesque motifs but metaphors for experience itself: fluid, shifting and impossible to hold. The contemplative stillness of the still-life tradition is therefore animated by a deeper reflection on time, transformation and continuity.

Personal history is woven quietly throughout these works. Small stones collected during Home's university years and shells retained over decades appear among the flowers and ceramics. Dwarfed by larger forms, these modest objects possess a particular poignancy. Smoothed by water and time, they become markers of lived experience, linking memory to place and transforming the painted tableau into a personal geography.

The peonies and roses bring another layer of meaning. Sumptuous and seductive, they are also reminders of impermanence, possessing a heartbreaking pathos. Their passage from tight bud to magnificent bloom and eventual withering becomes a quiet allegory of time—petals fall, colour fades, beauty passes. Their symbolism shifts across cultures, representing romance, shyness and affection in the Victorian era of Western traditions while signifying prosperity, honour and status in Chinese culture. Such multiplicity is characteristic of Home's work, where meanings remain fluid, layered and productively unresolved.

Ultimately, these paintings invite us, if not compel us, to look slowly and to linger in their presence. Their richness initially seduces the eye and the heart, but their deeper pleasures emerge through contemplation: in the play of light, the weight of objects, the movement of brushwork and the relationships that unfold between things. In Dean Home's hands, still life becomes more than observation - it becomes a poetic meditation on memory, cultural connection, transformation and the fragile persistence of what we choose to keep.

Susi Muddiman OAM

2026