The residency at the BSR has been an incredible experience both on a professional and personal level. It was a serendipitous occasion to find myself surrounded by five other painters when I was looking to focus on the painterly aspect of my own practice. The extensive conversations around colour and line, the daily practice of painting and ideas of what position painting occupies today were invigorating and thought provoking. Having three months to concentrate on making new works in the studio allowed me to develop strategies around using painting to create a ‘script’. The desire being to orchestrate images into setting the scene of a possible narrative, with each painting linked to the next and building up a larger suite of paintings that exist as a single body of work.

— Maria de Lima