This piece was created for The Piccolo Gallery’s commission call, themed 'Triptych'. Artists were provided a Triptych maple wood hinged panel to use as their canvas for a concept/style of their choice.
A Place to Hide, shows a dark wooden wardrobe that opens like real wardrobe doors. Inside, nightwear hangs in gentle folds, filling the space. At the bottom of the closet, a child rests tucked beneath the hanging fabric of a mother's closet. The scene is detailed with careful lighting and beautifully executed details.
This piece speaks to those who appreciate quiet/reflective moments and value intentional design in art. The interior layout creates a memory‑rich childhood scene, while the design used on the triptych panel adds a functional element to the wardrobe. If you're drawn to beautiful art that is elegant and rich in detail, you'll find this piece compelling.
Georgia's work will be available for purchase at our Community Online Auction in Oct 2026. Purchases help uplift an everyday artist and fuel The Piccolo Gallery’s commission model.
How do the spaces we inhabit shape our memories, emotions, and sense of self? My work explores the subtle boundaries between private and public life, often through domestic interiors and architectural spaces. I’m interested in the quiet moments that happen within these environments and how certain places and people stay in our memory long after we leave them.
A Place to Hide focuses on a small, enclosed interior: the inside of a mother's closet. As children, closets, blankets, and corners of rooms often become places to hide, rest, or transform through imagination. In this painting, the dresses hang above a child forming a soft barrier between the child and the outside space of the room. It creates a sense of comfort and enclosure while also hinting at the presence of femininity. A parent’s closet can feel especially mysterious, filled with clothing that belongs to another stage of life. Surrounded by her mother’s dresses, the child is positioned beneath objects that quietly signal adulthood, identity, and the roles she may grow into.
Material choices also reinforce the sense of privacy within the work. The oil painting is on an arched wooden panel that echoes the curved shape of the closet. Two outer panels function like doors that can open and close, allowing the scene to be revealed or concealed. This movement reflects the way memories often work, sometimes hidden, sometimes briefly uncovered. By opening the panels, the viewer is invited to revisit a moment from the past.
A Place to Hide continues my broader exploration of how interiors hold memory and meaning. Through quiet, enclosed spaces, I’m interested in how environments can comfort us, shape our experiences, and leave lasting impressions on how we remember ourselves.
Vancouver based artist Georgia Devonshire uses large scale oil paintings to explore how barriers such as windows change our perspective and knowledge of unfolding scenes. This was inspired by the many night walks during COVID, where illuminated windows were the only glimpses into others lives. These quiet moments that blur the line between private and public have since shaped her practice to question our perception of others and self. During her BFA at the University of Victoria, Georgia began her current interest in the distortion of memory, and how built environments shape and change the perspective and recollection of memories. Taking influence from Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, she explores how both real and imagined spaces shape human experience and emotion, using windows and reflections as metaphors for memory’s multifaceted nature.
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