Fields of Belonging

The Artwork's Story
This small oil painting forms part of the Thinking of Home collection, exploring home as a lived feeling of safety, identity, and belonging. At its centre sits a white cottage with a bold red roof, nestled within tall green trees and open countryside. The house feels both sheltered and open, grounded in its surroundings yet gently lifted by the warmth of light across the landscape.

A golden field of sunflowers stretches outward, filling the composition with a sense of abundance and quiet radiance. Nearby barns and rolling hills extend the scene into a broader sense of community and continuity, suggesting that home exists not in isolation, but within a wider rhythm of place and shared life.

Painted in oil at a small scale of 10 x 10 cm, the work holds an intimate presence, inviting close attention. Finished with genuine copper leaf edges, it carries a subtle warmth that echoes the sunlit tones of the landscape, extending the feeling of light beyond the painted surface.

Reflection
In Fields of Belonging, home is understood as something both personal and expansive. It is the inner sense of being held, as well as the outer landscape that reflects that feeling back to us.

The sunflowers are central to this language of belonging. Turning toward the light, they suggest growth, openness, and continuity, quiet reminders of how life unfolds in response to care, time, and environment. Around them, the cottage and surrounding land form a gentle structure of stability, where shelter and openness exist in balance.

There is a sense of ease in this work, but also a deeper recognition: that belonging is not static. It is cultivated through relationship, with place, with memory, and with the quiet rhythms of the natural world. In this way, the painting becomes a meditation on home as both grounding and growth, a place where we are shaped as much as we are held.

Artwork Dimensions