Excerpt from the exhibition press release, courtesy of Glass Rice

“In her latest body of abstract work, Favin draws inspiration from The Ten Oxherding Images, a Zen Buddhist text from the 12th century consisting of ten figurative paintings with short poems accompanying each image. The visual narrative depicts the journey from the early stages of a meditative practice and to ultimately, a return to the original self. In the allegorical paintings, the ox represents the original self and the ox-herder is representative of the part of us that seeks the original self.

Through a meditative approach to light, material, and shape, Favin’s work explores how the hand moves when the mind is still - alternating between meditative stillness and embodied states of action. In the artist’s words, "I created these paintings not as someone who has figured out each stage of the journey, but as someone who is in process of living through each stage moment by moment. They are a response and a guide to the overstimulation, stillness, grief and joy all tangled up in our modern world - a way for me to make sense of the environment around me. Despite being presented linearly, I rarely experience the stages as so. I am constantly jumping back and forth, seeking a sense of inner knowing and connection to something far bigger than my own single story.”

Each image was painted between 2023-2024 and are comprised of oil and acrylic on cotton canvas, 48x48x1.5inch — except for the final painting, which is on a 20 inch rounded canvas. Image 2 is available to collect.