For 50,000 years or more, women worked together in fire lit caves, making pots and paintings. This collection of paintings is inspired by Angela Mellor’s glowing white porcelain ceramics.

The array of white bowls, impressed with marine motifs – seaweed, sand rippled by tide, ancient rocks, brought back memories of Mary’s childhood spent on the shores of the Indian Ocean.

The porcelain vessels become a metaphor for thoughts and experiences distilled in her memory. In these small intimate paintings, many of the details and colours are also her response to Italian Renaissance frescos. In Fra Angelico’s Annunciation there appears a small urn with white lilies, set between the Angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary. In the buildings painted by Masaccio we see baskets of bread on window sills, terracotta pots, linen hanging out to dry and even a cat curled asleep, providing a homely counterpart to the portrayals of St. Peter and the disciples below. These small and insignificant details give expression to the intimacy shared by human beings within their homes and in everyday life.

Mary Romer has enriched the distillation of daily life, by using a warm colour palette, echoing the past, which neatly complements the cool, translucent ceramics, created by Mellor.