08/09/26
Miranda Boulton – interview
Chain of Flowers
Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery
until 6 December 2026
At its simplest, Miranda Boulton (b1973, Cambridge) paints flowers; in a little more depth, her abstracted paintings deal with questions of memory and time. Using the process of slow-looking, she spends hours with other artists’ floral still-lifes, absorbing them and committing them to memory. Then she settles down to paint, allowing memories of the work(s) she studied to intermingle with things that happened that morning and thoughts running through her mind. The output is series after series of vibrant works, some where the subject matter is more apparent than others. The works on paper are freer and more experimental, heavy under the weight of so much paint. The canvases seem tighter, more considered, but riotous nevertheless.
For her first institutional exhibition, Boulton studied the works of Eloise Harriet Stannard and Emily Stannard, two 19th-century painters and prominent members of the Norwich Society of Artists. Discovering their shared inspirations, Boulton followed in Emily’s footsteps with a trip to Amsterdam, where she studied the works of Jan van Huysum in the Rijksmuseum. Although not shown together with Boulton’s, the Stannards’ pictures have been brought out of storage and are on display in another gallery at Norwich Castle, creating, as Boulton puts it – and has titled her show – a Chain of Flowers.
Read the full interview here