Set in an imagined post-human world, Devin Cecil-Wishing’s work uses the visual language of Baroque era painting to depict animals, allegory and enigmatic narratives in order to explore themes of life, death and human nature. Each painting comes in to being, one part at a time, in an improvisational manner, rather than from a set plan at the start. In this way the painting process itself becomes a meditation on it’s meaning and as the image grows, the meaning and narrative of the piece gradually come in to focus. The exact narratives are deliberately open-ended and invite the viewer to participate by bringing their own interpretations to the work.

His paintings are executed in oils, using only historical pigments which would have been available to a painter in the 17th century, and are painted exclusively from life, memory and imagination. He avoids the use of any form of photographic references, AI or other such tools, due to his deeply held belief that the process of creation and the end product are intrinsically connected.