In her second solo exhibition at Julie Saul Gallery entitled Lesson from a Guinea Hen, Evans continues her exploration of the connection between ornamentation and devotion with a new series of works on paper.

Her inspiration comes from the way adornment is used to honor Hindu Gods in Indian miniature paintings, as well as from Indian life’s daily rituals which privilege the visual in very meaningful ways. She borrows some of these same garlands, patterns and other embellishments and applies them to nature, which she chooses to honor instead.

Traditional Pahari or Rajasthani representations of trees, lotus, or water, as well as other natural forms of her own making, rise out of pools of loosely poured color and are painstakingly adorned in fine detail. She mediates the intentional with the intuitive, as well as the figurative and the abstract in these new works, which are markedly different from her earlier ones. Her all-over compositions and spirograph mandalas of the past have given way to central forms surrounded by and floating in a generous amount of open space.

These are more subdued in both color and mood, yet remain complex in a singular way as they quietly shimmer from mica particles in the paint. These new works are expansive, dreamlike and reveal themselves slowly, as they continue to reflect Evans’ ongoing interest in the intimate and the handmade.