Loire Valley Summer Residency 2026: Applications Now Open - Closing 14 June

I am a painter whose work emerges from an ongoing dialogue with nature, particularly trees - not as fixed forms, but as remembered presences. Based in London, my daily environment is shaped by density, movement, and constant stimulation. This residency offers a necessary shift: a space to decelerate, to observe, and to reorient my perception.

In Azay-le-Rideau, I am interested in inhabiting the landscape through duration - allowing time, light, and atmosphere to register slowly. My practice involves reconstructing imagined landscapes through fragments of memory and photographs I collect. These elements are not documented but reassembled, collaged into new spatial compositions that exist between reality and recollection.

This process is closely tied to a sense of inner stillness. Being here feels like entering a quieter state of awareness -listening to birdsong, watching clouds drift, and attuning to subtle shifts in light. These moments suggest a kind of spiritual awakening, where attention itself becomes a medium.

I am also interested in challenging my own tendencies toward accumulation and refinement. Rather than building layers toward resolution, I want to explore reduction - understand how absence, space, and restraint can carry equal weight. In this context, “less” is not a limitation, but a way of opening the work.

Through this residency, I hope to recalibrate both my perception and my practice- to allow the external landscape and internal memory to meet, overlap, and transform into something newly composed.

Read Seohyun Oh's Full Residency Interview

Being from New York, I think my work often displays some of the characteristics of the buzz of the city - high energy, and oftentimes crowded with figures. The space within the work is often fractured, with schematic diagrams interrupting organic form. When I was invited to participate in this residency I was excited to see what would occur in the painting when removed from this context and the rhythm of New York.

The Loire was particularly exciting for the history embedded in its landscape. From the Neolithic Caves to the studios inhabited by Da Vinci and Ernst, this valley has been a source of creation for thousands of years.

In the city, my practice involves an accumulation of reference material, which ultimately guides the composition of the work. While I am here, I am interested in releasing control and submitting more to the material itself, allowing the paint to dictate the form and subject matter.

Emphasizing this material dialogue I am interested in making work whose form is not dictated or prefigured, but emergent. The silence afforded by the landscape is the ideal backdrop for this call and response approach to painting.

Read Atticus Wakefield's Full Residency Interview 

Nature is not only a source of inspiration but also a physical part of my work. As I become increasingly aware of its presence and role within my practice, I have begun to rediscover and deepen my connection with plants in a more holistic way.

Being here, I am surrounded by a vivid range of refreshing greens. The landscape feels expansive and open. My eyes were forgetting to look far—in the city, the horizon is rarely visible.

In contrast to working in London, working here feels natural; it flows with ease. I wake up already immersed in nature, held within the fullness of spring—young leaves, shoots, buds, wild roses, and apple blossoms.

My recent series of plant casting work leans into the sense of wind: what it carries, how it moves, and the messages it holds. Many spring plants seem to embody the energies of wind and fire, carrying a sense of purity, warmth, and hope.

I feel deeply grateful to be able to work with nature in this way, and sharing this moment of stillness with the inspiring residents and General Assembly.

Read Seohyun Oh's Full Residency Interview