The exhibition opens with a quietly enchanting triptych, originally created for the group show Into The Forest last year. Painted with inks made from foraged natural materials — oak galls, rowan berries, cherry bark — the works are as much about process as they are about imagery. There’s a tactile, earthy immediacy to them, the pigments grounding each panel in the very woodland that inspired it.
Viewed together, the three large paintings tell a dreamlike tale of a child’s journey through a magical forest — a narrative stitched together by recurring avian motifs that flutter across the paper like half-remembered fragments of a fairy tale.
Juliet trying to look arty
Surrounding the central triptych is a delicate ‘flock’ of smaller bird paintings, featuring some of the artist’s favourite British species. These miniatures are deceptively simple: ink-washed backgrounds set off stark, monochrome silhouettes, each etched with fine detail using a sharpened stick gathered during a forest walk. The effect is both raw and reverent — a kind of visual field note on wonder, migration, and memory.
Writer Nataliya Deleva, has collaborated with Juliet to produce emotive audio descriptions, which you can listen to underneath some of the images here.
Boy holding stick with Crows flying overhead Painted using natural inks, Oak Gall, Cherry Bark & Rowan
Goose feather for drawing, oak Galls and Oak Gall ink
The image above shows some of the materials used to create the artworks, including bird feathers to paint and draw with and Oak Galls, which can be crushed and made into a black ink
Three crows flying. Mixed media with Oak Gall wash £70
Swallow with natural ink wash. Mixed media £50
Wren, mixed media with Cherry Bark wash £50
Natural ink painting showing a child riding on the back of a bird. Painted using natural inks, Oak Gall, Cherry Bark & Rowan
Natural ink painting, showing a child looking into a hole in a tree. Painted using natural inks, Oak Gall, Cherry Bark & Rowan
The exhibition runs from 2-18th of May at Vinoramica, 2A Winchester Rd, Highams Park. London E4 9LN
Nataliya Deleva will be running a creative writing course at Vinoramica on Sunday 11th May 3-4pm book a space here
Please see Vinoramica for opening hours