Flourish & Flow brings together seven Paintings by LUAP at Unlimited Earth Care in Bridgehampton, New York. Curated by Frederico Azevedo, the exhibition brings personal memory, landscape and The Pink Bear together across a body of recent work.
The Paintings are rooted in places that have remained with LUAP over time. Childhood memories of water, the British seaside and familiar natural environments recur throughout the exhibition. Rather than reconstructing these places literally, LUAP returns to them through Painting, where memory, pattern and shifts in scale reshape the original experience.
In Rowing Toward a Place I Forgot, The Pink Bear crosses a still lake based on a boating lake from LUAP’s childhood. The location gives the Painting its starting point, while repeated foliage, pattern and shifts in colour move the scene away from literal description.
“The oars creak. The water barely moves. Time stretches out. It is peaceful, but uncertain. Something about the stillness makes everything feel louder.”
LUAP
Other works return to imagery associated with LUAP’s childhood in Cleethorpes. Big Whippy enlarges the familiar form of a soft-serve ice cream, while Dig My Sandy Grave Whilst I Eat This Melting Ice Cream draws on the humour and rituals of the British seaside. Both begin with experiences that are particular to LUAP, but their subjects have become recurring elements within his wider Painting practice.
Water, foliage and flowers run throughout Flourish & Flow. Some passages are closely observed, while others break into repeated pattern, colour and more expressive areas of Oil and Acrylic. The Pink Bear appears across these changing environments, sometimes isolated within the landscape and elsewhere becoming more absorbed by it.
The works remain rooted in LUAP’s own history, while their subjects extend beyond autobiography into experiences that are widely shared. Childhood, landscape, familiar rituals and the places that stay with us over time give the Paintings a connection beyond their original source.
At Unlimited Earth Care, the natural imagery within the Paintings sits within a setting shaped by Azevedo’s longstanding engagement with landscape and planting.
