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Interviews with Artists







Leah Nyssa Stewart, Linda Hemmersbach & Shivani Khoshia



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Interview by Kristian Day

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Published in August 2026

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A Shimmering Tangle brings together new work for an exhibition at Haarlem Artspace by Leah Nyssa Stewart, Linda Hemmersbach and Shivani Khoshia, developed during and leading up to a shared micro-residency in Shining Cliff Woods, Derbyshire. Over several days, the artists spent time together in the woodland, walking, drawing, painting and talking. There was no fixed brief or expected outcome. The residency offered uninterrupted time to think in proximity to one another, to share space without agenda, and to allow conversations—visual, intuitive and spoken—to unfold at their own pace. The exhibition brings together works made during and around this period, alongside earlier paintings and drawings that reveal connections extending further back in time.





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Linda Hemmersbach



A Shimmering Tangle started life as a micro-residency in Shining Cliff Woods (and slightly before that as a conversation between three artists who hadn’t spent time together before).

What did the woods offer as a site for making and thinking during this time? Were there any surprises?
The woods offered a place to pause, be still and reconnect with my senses. Paying attention to minute details in a new and unfamiliar environment felt deeply meditative. I have two young children so my time in the studio is limited and very structured. I live in the Peak District and often go for walks to gather my thoughts but I rarely make work outside…the studio is where all my making happens. Painting in an environment that was both ancient and constantly shifting felt urgent and invigorating. The woodland envelops you and feels very alive. You have to trust yourself to make very instinctive decisions as it feels almost impossible to paint a woodland; everything is intermingled and tangled and there are so many layers to what you are seeing that it becomes difficult to see anything clearly. I tried to focus on the feeling of the forest, the sounds, the movements, the vibrations; intuitively picking out colours and textures. It helped me “see” in a new way and brought clarity to some older, unfinished work when I returned to the studio.The residency also offered time and space for uninterrupted deep conversations with Leah and Shivani, who I was meeting in person for the first time, as well as Sarah, who runs Haarlem Art Space and looked after us in the woods. It felt really wonderful to be in the company of these other female artists, and to see how they responded to the environment.





Your work often moves between microscopic and geological scales, where deep time and intimate experience seem to coexist. What draws you to those shifting perspectives, and what do they allow you to explore that a fixed point of view cannot?
I am drawn to Painting as a place where different timescales and layers of experience can coexist. I don’t believe that anything is really fixed, and view ambiguity and mystery as portals that can expand our understanding and perception of the world, as well as our place within it. Our thoughts, bodies, emotions, relationships, as well as the natural world and the cosmos are continually in flux.

I think a lot about impermanence and transformation in my work. Exploring the relationship between all living and non-living things within the timescale of deep time gives me a greater appreciation of being here on this planet and all the subtle changes and beauty that I can observe in my surroundings. Ultimately it also helps me to accept the inevitability of change, transience and death.

I find it fascinating that we can hold something as old as a meteorite or a perfectly smooth pebble from the beach in our hands yet for us humans it is impossible to grasp the timescale and changes this seemingly fixed object has gone through. Creating a sense of touch and texture within my works is my way of bringing these vast distances closer and less overwhelming, making something ungraspable more intimate.

I like to imagine my paintings in a continuous state of becoming; a weaving together of marks, where an image is in the process of emerging, at the cusp of being formed.





Let’s talk about paint as a substance. What kind of techniques or processes do you use when painting? Are you drawn to a specific support and surface?
I mostly work in oil on aluminium, or pencil and watercolour on paper. For my oil paintings I prepare thin aluminium panels by sanding them and then applying a first layer of one colour allover. This colour choice is very intuitive and sets the tone and mood for the rest of the painting to unfold. As a rhythm and structure within the painting starts to emerge, a dialogue between the painting and myself begins. Layers are built up with a mixture of oil and wax. I like the transparency but also stickiness the wax gives to the paint; every brush mark stays visible and the painting acquires a sculptural quality, while remaining light in touch. Sometimes this process can take days, other times a painting can take a year or more to complete.Working on aluminium adds a beautiful cool light to the paintings, which I sometimes like to accentuate by leaving areas exposed or scratched into, and other times I prefer thicker layers to give the paintings a denser quality.

In my works on paper, my favourite medium is pencil or coloured pencil, which is a much slower process than painting and which I like to do in the evenings to reflect on the day. I slowly build up layers and structures in the same way I would in a painting but I love that pencil has such an immediate and fragile quality to it, it really feels like you are revealing your innermost self. I use watercolours when I need to get ideas out more urgently or when I am travelling.


Do you think of your work as abstract? When working in a language such as painting, what are your thoughts on translating that into verbal language?
Although I wouldn’t consciously label my work as abstract, my paintings are driven by an internal source rather than direct observation or representation. However, these inner places draw heavily on my experience and memories of my external surroundings. Certain colours, textures and movements within the paintings all come from places I have moved through and felt, yet they are re-imagined in a way that connects them to colour beyond the typical landscape palette and towards more conscious dream scapes.

I am particularly drawn to the light at certain moments of the day (i.e. early morning or dusk) or during certain times of the year and also specific atmospheres within the landscape, i.e. the feeling of walking through a remote, barren moorland or the sounds of woodland creatures that remain invisible, yet their presence is felt.

I am not interested in depicting what something looks like but more what it feels like; the essence or core and the presence of something. What this ‘something’ is that I am trying to get to is very hard to put into words. I am searching for something that feels both old and ancient, yet also new and unfamiliar. The painting acts like a shadow behind a sense of this 'thing' or the painting's connected idea. Painting is a means to communicate a visual thinking about the world that exists outside of language, and offers space for things that are uncertain, shifting, unclear and not fully formed. It helps me articulate things that I don’t fully understand (yet) or that don’t have a name.

A friend recently described my paintings as a form of text—abstract thoughts knitted together through jittery marks to form a loosely woven tapestry. I found this observation deeply resonant.



Installation View, A Shimmering Tangle, Haarlem Artspace, Wirksworth, 2026


How do you think you will or would like to develop your work further following the residency and exhibition?
I would like to try and work in nature more, to find moments of stillness during walks where I can draw, listen and take notes. As for my work in the studio I currently have two relatively large aluminium panels waiting for me which will definitely be a challenge as I tend to work mostly on a small scale. I like that small paintings invite moments of intimacy and stillness and ask the viewer to study them up close. So it will be interesting to see how I will translate this intimacy into larger works. I have also recently noticed a compositional shift away from having a central form that draws the eye to the centre of the painting to more formless fields or veils of activity, and I’m looking forward to exploring this further.

I also work in ceramics and I’m excited to see how my time in the woods might inform my sculptural practice.



Leah Nyssa Stewart



A Shimmering Tangle started life as a micro-residency in Shining Cliff Woods (and slightly before that as a conversation between three artists who hadn’t spent time together before).
What did the woods offer as a site for making and thinking during this time? Were there any surprises?
The biggest surprise for me in the woods was how quickly spending time there provided a kind of reset from studio practice. We were there for a relatively short amount of time, and one of my preconceived thoughts was that as someone who tends to work slowly that I’d be trying to keep up, but even a short amount of time tuning into the forest and drawing there was beneficial for making and thinking about work. The environment was constantly in motion, and working with that rhythm was lively and exciting. The discussions between Shivani, Linda and myself, and also Sarah from Haarlem Artspace and Natasha who took the photos were wonderful and contributed to this sense of being part of the entanglement of the forest. Having those conversations, as someone who works quite independently, felt so refreshing and I can see how these encounters can shape future ways of working both within and outside the studio.





How would you describe the relationship between colour, feeling and place in your work, and how did your time in the woods affect your use of colour?
My use of colour in painting is largely instinctive, I’m usually quite greedy for colours and combinations that play off from each other - it comes alive for me when colours are reacting within the work, I like that sense of soothing veering into chaotic. I like the sensuousness of colour swirling around, different passages coming in and out of focus. It’s hard to talk about colour in art without shape/form or mark-making, the vessel for the colour. I’m interested in how these combinations of marks/forms and colour can create rhythms in painting, which is quite a seductive process for me. It’s always tempting to see how another bit of green might work against some violet for example - colours change and move, and the intimacy of painting on a small scale means that you get to see all of these shifts up close.My time in the woods didn’t affect my approach to colour greatly - I brought a lot of soft pastels and gouache paints, and I was still selecting colours instinctively rather than from direct observation. I’d say that the bigger shift was to forms, I was drawn to the way things moved in the woods, layers of entangled agents: plants, rocks, trees, insects, water, wind - it was engrossing to sit amongst them and see all the different movements. I worked quickly, and I was keeping notes of different shapes and lines that seemed to rise up and dissipate whilst working.


Protection and care seem to run quietly through your work. What continues to draw you to these forms of shelter, and how have they shaped the way you think about painting?
Protection as a recurring theme or motif continues to interest me for a few reasons - I tend to work fairly slowly across multiple works at the same time, and it’s a broad, perhaps nebulous theme that I haven’t fully explored yet - if I ever could. I’m interested in what a protective shape or form could be, and how this could be communicated through painting, both within the image and the material or object of the painting. These shapes or motifs could come from nature: shells, seeds, eggs, or from other sources: tents, dens, caves, carvings or offerings. They could be just generated from the ingress of paint on the substrate and interpreted as protective, perhaps one is leaning to another in a gesture that feels supportive. The idea of irregular patterns being a way to trick or ensnare malevolent spirits or setting a clock wrong to fool the devil also springs to mind.

In terms of how I think about painting - I’d describe it as often being purely a fascination of the physical act of putting colour down on a surface and pulling it around, and seeing how forms and images emerge or build. I like how the work shifts during this process, there’s a fluidity to working like this that retains the capacity to surprise you. There’s a lot of negotiation - a bit of viridian invites more magenta, some yellow upsets the applecart, alizarin is brought in to smooth things over. Sometimes I like to work from direct observation, but in this recent body of work it’s been largely intuitive or interpretive and comes together with paint on the surface.


How do you construct and build up space within your paintings? How would you describe this space ? Are there specific objects or forms within this space that you are you trying to evoke?
I usually start by laying down a fairly sheer colour across the surface, pulling it back by wiping some of the paint away with a cloth. The process of painting is from then on usually additive, one shape will inform the next, and the image builds up from there. The space is usually quite dense, and whilst it can be difficult to talk about paintings generally rather than specific pieces, I think often there’s little depth within the work, with a lot of the forms in a similar register, being enmeshed within the image. I like that kind of tension where something is expanding perhaps to the point of collapse, and structures within the image that are supporting but also potentially constraining forms. Sometimes that feels quite energetic, maybe sometimes it’s like white noise where the overall pattern can go so far through dissonance back to kind of hypnotic.





How do you think you will or would like to develop your work further following the residency and exhibition?
Seeing the works on the wall in a gallery context has made me think about how I’d like to develop this body of work as objects, and explore how they could have a different physical presence, such as combining pieces into assemblages, bending or folding works on paper and incorporating other materials. I’d also like to keep up the practice of working outside, both in woodlands and out on the moors in the Peak District near where I live. During the residency I found myself sitting by rivers and tiny streams, so I think following that instinct to make work by water is where I’ll start - something about the sound of running water combined with how the light reflects off the surface is rather mesmerising and such an enjoyable environment to work in.



Installation View, A Shimmering Tangle, Haarlem Artspace, Wirksworth, 2026



Shivani Khoshia


A Shimmering Tangle started life as a micro-residency in Shining Cliff Woods. What did the woods offer as a site for making and thinking during this time? Were there any surprises?
We spent several hours in the forest, unsure if I’ve done that before. Being there for so long started to open up new feelings for me. Over the days, the textures around me began to take on a dizzy hyperreal quality. The sounds and layers of subtle sensations were incredible, the patterns of the water in the stream mesmerising. It felt electrifying. I had kaleidoscopic dreams at night!

I was surprised by the things I noticed. The forest felt like a mother, holding us. Everything in it became a receptacle of sunlight. The leaves, flowers, the spaces between branches. Even water seemed to collect light, wearing it like a shimmer. Everything seemed like it was talking, singing, tangled. To each other. To us. With us.

I found myself becoming more curious. Watching water flow around stones, watching how they altered the path of the water, and wondering do they hold memories of that passage? I wondered if water is reborn in each newly formed ripple. The space between each ripple like breath, a different sized inhalation. I felt the forest whispering her secrets to me. Everything singing a new song, as fresh as could be, whilst also carrying the notes of the oldest song its ever sung.





During our conversations in the woods, you used the words “tuning in” before starting a piece of work. You have also mentioned silence as important to making work. Could you describe what you mean by that and how the energy and sounds of the forest affected you and your process?
I like to discover and feel my way into new inner spaces, maybe they are mental spaces. I’m unsure, language is tricky. Anyway, there, in these spaces, things feel clear and fresh and anything feels possible. Silence is very alive to me. There’s a subtle hum, which is sweet and hypnotic. But then the silence starts to expand, teem with colours, vibrations, beings, messages and song. It’s exciting. The forest helps me get into that zone. There are so many sounds and subtle sensations to be felt there, and they are all vibrating with an intense aliveness. After a while they feel like interconnecting frequencies, they clear the field of its usual noise, and that’s where the exciting unknown starts to whisper. There, the work is born.


What does painting reveal to you?
Painting reveals many layers of magic and new ways of understanding. In this body of work, the paintings were asking me to look at two interconnecting spaces emerging through my body. A sort of column of light out of my heart space towards the sky with a column of darkness going in the direction of the earth.

The work showed me how to build bridges between these two spaces and look at their qualities in new ways. For example, that light could be monstrous or aggressive, and darkness a comforting cocoon. In the column, I could sense memories surfacing that weren’t mine. I thought maybe they belonged to my ancestors because they felt part of me, but also not. Whoever they belonged to, I wove those feelings and stories into painted symbols, structures, a kind of bodily architecture.





How do you think you will or would like to develop your work further following the residency and exhibition?
The residency helped me see that I need to spend more time in the forest. It’s really the key to expansion. This week, I went to the woods near Grace Dieu Priory, the ruins of a 13th century nunnery in Leicestershire. I perched myself on a large boulder in the middle of the stream, and spent an hour listening. Apparently, a spirit called the “White Lady” roams there. I didn’t see her, but I saw some other things…



Installation View, A Shimmering Tangle, Haarlem Artspace, Wirksworth, 2026


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leahstewart.co.uk
︎ @leahnyssa

lindahemmersbach.com
︎ @linda_hemmersbach

shivanikhoshia.com
︎ @shivanikhoshia

kristianday.co.uk
︎ @kristiandaygallery

haarlemartspace.co.uk
︎ @haarlemartspace

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If you like this why not read our interview with José García Oliva.
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