Delving into the anxieties of modern relationships, Evans’ latest body of work blurs the lines between courtship, rejection, and obsession. Shadowy figures and peeping silhouettes interrupt the stillness of domesticity, and facial features, a reassuring reference point, are removed or obscured: characters are unreadable, their motives unknown. Viewers are left questioning whether the paintings capture a blossoming love or something entirely more sinister. 

Exploring elements of the uncanny, Evans invokes the Lynchian double by way of mirrored ambiguous figures, and goes a step further, extending this doubling to the domestic space. Reading the home as a metaphorical ‘self’, permeable boundaries of hedges, doors, and blinds symbolise equally permeable psychological states: characters are vulnerable to external influences, literally and figuratively.

From the pure white lily of the Annunciation to Socrates' poisonous hemlock, botanical symbolism is an enduring theme in historical storytelling. Here, Evans plucks floral references from across centuries, spanning Greek mythology and Renaissance nuptial portraiture to David  Lynch's neo-noir Blue Velvet (1986). Whether revealing virtuous characteristics, signalling a sitter’s status, or foreshadowing events, Evans exploits the often contradictory meanings of botanicals to further blur the boundary between courtship and obsession. 

In Meet Cute we see a towering hedge that references laurel, a nod to the myth of Apollo and Daphne and its dark tale of unrequited love, unflinching pursuit, and a desperate attempt at evasion. And in another pair of small-scale paintings, Promise and Gift, in the implied intimacy of a bed, one hand carefully pinches a carnation, a love symbol, while another holds a foreboding hemlock, suggestive of malice.  These contrary perspectives are held in tense suspension: that of the admirer and the admired, or perhaps the obsessed and the object of obsession.