Garden Without Seasons Coming to Pitzhanger Manor

An exhibition of 29 works from Clare Woods to run until November

The Inside Garden. Picture: Clare Woods

June 18, 2026

Clare Woods will take over Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery this summer with Garden Without Seasons, a new exhibition running from 29 July to 8 November. The show brings together 29 recent works made over the past four years, including paintings, collages and prints, all centred on the plants, objects and everyday scenes Woods returned to during the pandemic.

Woods is known for her glossy, fluid oil paintings, and many of the works in this exhibition began with simple photographs of flowers or familiar items. She uses these images as a starting point to create pieces that sit somewhere between the real and the abstract. Shapes shift, colours swirl and details blur, encouraging visitors to slow down and look more closely than they might in daily life.

Her early training as a sculptor comes through in the way she focuses on form and space. For this exhibition, she has also responded directly to Pitzhanger’s rooms, architecture and gardens, creating work that sits comfortably within the building’s historic setting while still feeling fresh and contemporary.

Several pieces explore the idea of looking through glass — something many people became used to during lockdown. Windows, reflections and panes of coloured light appear throughout the show, from the bright reds of Cold Case to the layered greens and yellows of Show All. One of the largest works, Under the Dome, is based on the rare plants inside Kew Gardens’ Temperate House, painted from a low angle so the viewer looks up into the glass structure that protects them.

Woods’ process is hands-on and often fast. She paints wet-on-wet in long sessions, mixing colours directly on the surface. Leftover paint is never wasted: she uses it to create sheets of colour that later become collages, which will also be on display. These works on paper, set in coloured frames chosen by the artist, offer a quieter counterpoint to the larger canvases.

Although many of the works are bright and full of life, they also carry a sense of fragility. Some pieces were inspired by flowers sent to Woods after a stay in hospital, and others play with shadows and fading blooms. Themes of time, change and absence run through the exhibition, echoing the atmosphere of Pitzhanger itself, where Sir John Soane’s presence is still felt long after his lifetime.

Woods draws on a wide range of influences, from Dutch still-life painters to Giorgio Morandi and even George Orwell, whose writing about his own garden appears in the background of one of the works. But the exhibition remains firmly rooted in her own experience and her interest in how we look at the world around us.

Garden Without Seasons promises a colourful, thoughtful journey through Pitzhanger’s galleries, offering moments of brightness as well as quiet reflection. As Woods puts it, “The garden is an area that can offer a glimpse of what was there before,” making Pitzhanger — with its house, grounds and long history — a fitting place to show this body of work.