May Fowler presents a series of six canvases that explore the boundaries of portraiture through abstraction and object symbolism. Rather than depicting faces, Fowler constructs personal and familial identities using carefully chosen objects, orchids, heirlooms, and domestic artefacts, each embedded with emotional and narrative significance. This approach invites viewers to consider how people can be represented through what they leave behind, cherish, or are remembered by.

Fowler uses oil paint to layer, obscure, and reveal these items, creating textured surfaces that echo the complexity of memory and identity. Her palette draws from archival family photos and inherited textiles, grounding each painting in a sense of time and lineage. The compositions are deliberately sparse in places, allowing negative space to suggest absence or silence within familial histories.

Throughout the series, the orchid becomes a recurring motif. Bred by Fowler’s grandfather and named after her family members, the flower acts as a living link between generations. Its presence in each work subtly shifts, reflecting the evolving nature of relationships and memory. By positioning the canvases in a cluster, Fowler invites the viewer to read the works as a sequence, like pages from a diary or layers of a family tree.

Fowler’s interest lies in the emotional weight of objects and the way they can carry, conceal, or distort memory. Her process combines traditional painting with research into family archives and oral history. The result is a quiet but emotionally charged portrait of connection, loss, and identity, told not through faces, but through the traces of lives lived.

Fowler continues to develop this strand of work, with future projects aimed at expanding the scale and incorporating found objects and textile elements into installation-based formats.