Hunch Hunch (moving through), 2026, watercolour and varnish on wooden board, 40x40cm
Hold Hold (sensations and dreams), 2026, watercolour and varnish on wooden board, 40x40cm
Grasp Grasp (within the veil), 2026, watercolour and varnish on wooden board, 40x40cm
This series explores human and other-than-human entanglements, particularly connections to the seemingly inanimate world through affect, sensation and embodiment.
Through the process of apophenia – the tendency to perceive meaningful connections, patterns or messages within unrelated data – these paintings invite viewers to uncover what is meaningful to them and to think about how they connect to the ‘inanimate’ world.
Heaney starts each painting with rough depictions of physical things: hands grasping, tongues licking, open mouths baring teeth, eyes gazing, fabric, metal, wood, sweat, water… She then intuitively works over these with new depictions and marks, creating a field of sensations.
Libby Heaney, Hunch Hunch (moving through), 2026, watercolour and varnish on wooden board, 40x40cm.
Heaney works with watercolour impolitely, treating it like a more permanent media such as oil or acrylic. The impermanent nature of watercolour – the fact it keeps dissolving each time a new layer is added – reminds Heaney of quantum particles, the fluid nature of self and more broadly the unstable nature of reality.
Heaney paints on a flat surface so that water pools and forms little magical petri-dishes, where chance and chaos occur as colours swirl and blur.
The paintings are fixed through two layers of varnish, mat and gloss, depicting an almost invisible language of sensation, that Heaney developed while spending time with the Sainsbury Centre Living Art collection.
Libby Heaney, Hold Hold (sensations and dreams), 2026, watercolour and varnish on wooden board, 40x40cm.
The paintings were developed while spending time with the Sainsbury Centre’s Living Art Collection.
Hunch Hunch (moving through) was developed in dialogue with the wider collection through sight, touch and presence.
Hold Hold (sensations and dreams) arose from close contact with and dreaming next to Jean Arp’s bronze sculpture Dream Amphora, 1941.
Grasp Grasp (within the veil) draws on repetative engagement with Leonara Carrington’s The Pomps of Subsoil, 1947.
Libby Heaney, Grasp Grasp (within the veil), 2026, watercolour and varnish on wooden board, 40x40cm.