Arts writer Scarlet Thomas, from Luminosa Art Scene, shares her latest review on Forms of Being by Hilary Herrmann and Inga Dalrymple in the review below.
At OTOMYS Gallery, ‘Forms of Being’ approaches existence obliquely — through atmosphere, residue, and the spaces where perception thins out. Hilary Herrmann and Inga Dalrymple present works that feel suspended, as though each painting is mid-formation.
Herrmann’s paintings read like illuminated manuscripts slipped loose from doctrine and wandered into dream. Gold pigment and gold leaf gather in hair, halo horses, ignite dusk skies. Light clings to the surface. Her figures — in long white nightgown-like dresses, with elongated limbs and softened faces — hover between child, angel, guardian and memory.
The paint feels corporeal, worked until it carries weight. Surfaces appear weathered, as though the image has endured something before reaching us. There’s grit beneath the glow. In one scene, beneath a dense twilight sky, three children with luminous gold hair move forward as four angelic figures arc overhead, reaching toward a pale pink crescent moon. The moment hangs between protection and peril — are they being watched over, or watched?
Dalrymple’s canvases, by contrast, feel aerated and translucent, as though light has passed through them before arriving at the eye. Pigment sits thinly — dry-brushed, washed, allowed to evaporate at the edges. Greens, aquas, creams and storm-muted blues hover between interior and exterior space. At first glance, abstraction; then recognition slowly slides into place.
In ‘Pillow and Window with Leaf Reflections (Found You)’, what reads initially as a loose arrangement of grey-green marks gradually resolves into foliage pressed against glass.
Dalrymple’s works feel scaffolded and provisional. Her titles gently tether the paintings to the world, yet the images resist settling into illustration. They remain slightly elsewhere, filtered through recollection.
Herrmann thickens paint until it glows with inner conviction. Dalrymple thins it until it nearly disappears. Together, they suggest that existence is neither solid nor singular — but sediment and vapour, radiance and residue.
