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Artist · Ternform Gallery

Mira Venn

Practice and approach

Mira Venn makes paintings in which a shape seems to acquire a direction and then change its mind. Pale folds open into darker pockets; a narrow line sometimes holds a broad area of colour in place. Her practice begins with that unstable moment between recognising a thing and simply following a mark. The works reward a slow second look, especially where a seemingly continuous form turns out to have been interrupted by a different layer.

Venn starts on small paper sheets, working with a limited set of tones so that colour cannot solve every compositional problem for her. She turns a sheet between passes and leaves one edge unfinished until the rest of the image has settled. A promising small study is not enlarged square by square. Instead, she carries its main tension into a larger painting and lets the increased reach of an arm change the mark. Several passages may be scraped back. The resulting surface keeps evidence of decisions that a perfectly smooth reproduction can make difficult to see.

In Drift Instructions, this way of working becomes a question about orientation. The exhibition follows forms that resemble cloud, cloth or moving water without asking the viewer to settle on any one description. Venn's interest is in the process of finding a route through an image. A pale gap can act like a doorway for one viewer and a pause for another; both readings begin with the same painted boundary.

Away from a finished canvas, Venn keeps a notebook of edges rather than a catalogue of subjects. A shadow beside a handrail, the join of two sheets and a crease in folded paper can each prompt a small study. She describes an unfinished passage by its behaviour: it presses, slows, opens or loses weight. These verbs help her discuss a painting without making its uncertainty sound like a defect. For a visitor, the most useful starting point is equally modest: choose one edge, follow it carefully, and notice the first place where the image asks you to change direction.

Looking studies

Short exercises for a slower look. Open a study to read the full note; its original accompanying illustration is forthcoming.

An original grey-blue abstract painting with a pale passage bending beside a dark fold.View study ↗

Still-image study

Following a pale boundary

Follow a pale boundary through blue and pink swirls. Notice where the same edge stops looking like a ridge and begins to suggest an opening in the surface.

Following a pale boundary

An original grey-blue abstract painting with a pale passage bending beside a dark fold.
Original artwork for the fictional exhibition Drift Instructions.

The pale blue and pink swirls offer a route that repeatedly changes its apparent depth. Begin where a light passage meets a darker one and follow the boundary without naming the form. At one point it may resemble a ridge; elsewhere the same kind of line can seem to open into a hollow. The interest lies in that change of reading, which is available even before the image has been identified as a particular kind of object or material.

Try tracing the route once with your eyes and then describing its first interruption. This is a still-image looking exercise associated with Mira Venn's practice, not a recording of the artist at work.

Read this note in the looking room
An original grey-blue abstract painting with a pale passage bending beside a dark fold.View study ↗

Still-image study

A flower as an interruption

A pink flower creates a recognisable centre within a less definite painted field. Compare that clear subject with the slower, uncertain boundaries of its surrounding ground.

A flower as an interruption

An original grey-blue abstract painting with a pale passage bending beside a dark fold.
Original artwork for the fictional exhibition Drift Instructions.

A recognisable flower changes the way an otherwise loose painted field is read. The pink petals establish a centre quickly, while the surrounding dark leaves and pale ground supply a less definite set of edges. Compare the certainty of the flower's outline with the passages in which one colour seems to lose its boundary. The image can be discussed as an arrangement of marks without denying the subject that first made it recognisable.

Look away briefly, then return to a part of the ground instead of the flower. Notice how much of the composition becomes available through that smaller, less obvious point of entry.

Read this note in the looking room
An original grey-blue abstract painting with a pale passage bending beside a dark fold.View study ↗

Still-image study

When a form seems to billow

Grey, blue and white forms suggest movement through their relation to one another. Follow a narrowing passage before deciding what, if anything, the larger form resembles.

When a form seems to billow

An original grey-blue abstract painting with a pale passage bending beside a dark fold.
Original artwork for the fictional exhibition Drift Instructions.

Grey, blue and white passages create an impression of movement without showing a moving object. A pale area seems to push forward partly because the adjacent dark fold recedes. The comparison is useful for Mira Venn's concern with orientation: the apparent direction belongs to a relationship between marks, not to a label such as cloud or cloth. Neither label needs to be correct for the surface to offer a convincing route through it.

Find the point where the broadest pale form narrows. Decide whether the narrowing feels like a turn, a pause or a disappearance, and point to the edge that supports your description.

Read this note in the looking room
An original grey-blue abstract painting with a pale passage bending beside a dark fold.View study ↗

Still-image study

Reading a narrow fissure

A narrow blue fissure divides a pale surface while offering a route through it. Compare its compressed direction with the broader movement of a billowing form.

Reading a narrow fissure

An original grey-blue abstract painting with a pale passage bending beside a dark fold.
Original artwork for the fictional exhibition Drift Instructions.

The pale blue image has a sharply changing boundary that can suggest ice, a cut surface or a sculptural fold. Its appearance alone does not establish which material or process produced it. Set that uncertainty aside and examine how the narrow darker passage connects two larger areas. It creates a division, but also gives the eye a way to travel between parts that might otherwise seem separate.

Compare this route with the broad billowing study. Both can organise attention through contrast, yet one feels compressed and the other expansive. The difference can be described through width and direction before any imagined subject is introduced.

Read this note in the looking room

From the journal

Three editorial recommendations with related questions. Artist subjects are identified in each story; a recommendation does not imply the artist appears in it.

In the programme

Dates and status use the edition date, 8 September 2026.

Programme archive

Drift Instructions

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Pale folds and darker pockets offer routes through Mira Venn's abstract practice. Begin at an edge and follow the moment when a form changes direction, loses its boundary or makes space for another reading.

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