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Behind the wheel, in front of the storm.
Neva Hosking’s Behind the Wheel, in front of the storm traces the quiet interplay between human presence and the natural world. Her intricate drawings capture the lush flora of the far North, brimming with life yet tempered by an understanding of its impermanence. Her drawings break through the desire to transform the natural space through a sense of ownership or development, instead centering quiet observation as the guiding form for her works. Nature is entirely uninterested in human progress, and it’s beauty exists not as a fleeting spectacle, but as something that returns, transforms and endures. For in a day a forest might see the ground littered with dead leaves and fallen trees, but then somewhere a flower is budding and without desire for fanfare, without beginning or end, it repeats.
By drawing on vintage graph paper—relics of unsigned contracts, expired building forms, and forgotten campaigns—Neva bends our perception of the present. Interrupting our linear view on time, she evaluates the impact of an anthropocentric view on our collective ability to view and evaluate the environment. Using foundations of the manmade, her drawings burst forth on the page, superseding its authority, creating a counterpoint that inspires curiosity rather than a desire for ownership.
Observation, in Neva’s practice, is active in how it is essential to understanding the world around her. Her depictions remind us that nature is not static or separate but endlessly moving, growing, and reclaiming. To look deeply is to grow alongside it, broadening our understanding of its rhythms and, in turn, our place within them. Signing her works with a four-leaf clover, she cedes authorship to the world she observes, acknowledging its role as collaborator in her works and her life at large.
Like moths that carve patterns into forgotten sweaters, nature does not demand our attention yet leaves its marks all the same. These disruptions—holes, clearings, wilted leaves—are not fractures or allowances in our urban society, but part of a shared resilience of the environment, evidence of a world in which we are neither central nor separate.Neva Hosking offers this glimpse into her world of burgeoning green, an intense abundance seldom seen in the city, so that we too can bear witness.
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