Georg Wilson Paints the Mythic Rhythms of Nature in “The Last Oozings”

The ancient oak stands, a titan of the land, its gnarled limbs reaching skyward as if to pluck the passing clouds. Beneath its vast and weathered canopy, time moves in slow revolutions—acorns fall, sprout, and rise anew, the forest’s quiet chorus whispering of life’s endless turning. It is in this golden hush of autumn, where the last oozings of summer’s fullness bleed into russet and ochre, that Georg Wilson unveils “The Last Oozings,” her first solo exhibition at Pilar Corrias (31 January–22 March 2025). Presented as part of Gallery 2, a program dedicated to non-represented artists, the show unfolds as an ode to autumn—a season of retreat, where abundance fades and the land begins its slow withdrawal.

In this latest body of work, Wilson conjures a world where past and present, myth and material, dissolve into one. Her landscapes, emptied of human presence, teem with spectral wildlings and ancient guardians—creatures moving through a realm untouched by ownership. Drawing from English folklore, poetry, and the golden glow of painters like Samuel Palmer, she captures the land’s quiet majesty—where nature, when left to its own devices, flourishes beyond human dominion. The oak tree, “guardian of the forest,” presides over this vision, its branches sheltering the beings that inhabit these mythic terrains. On the occasion of “The Last Oozings” exhibition, Whitewall speaks with Georg Wilson about painting with the seasons, the role of folklore in her practice, and how her work envisions landscapes unbound by time.

WHITEWALL: Your work channels the cycles of nature—growth, decay, and renewal—both thematically and in its material presence. How does painting with the seasons affect your process, and do you find that certain elements emerge only at specific times of the year?

GEORG WILSON: I’ve recognized certain recurring motifs and colors that subconsciously emerge at the same time each year, particularly in the palette. While summer calls for more intensely saturated underpaintings, my work in winter might begin with a more muted tone, a paler quality of light. I have learned to look forward to these gradual shifts in my paintings—each season and time of working is never the same as the previous year.

“I have learned to look forward to these gradual shifts in my paintings,”

Georg Wilson

WW: “The Last Oozings” draws from Keats and, more broadly, from a lineage of English pastoral and visionary painting, particularly Samuel Palmer. How do you see your work engaging with or subverting these historical references, particularly in the absence of human figures?

GW: My work is a vessel to interrogate various thoughts and feelings about the English countryside. I grew up in London, so I’ve always been a visitor in the countryside, but I would frequently visit Cornwall and other parts of the country, and I now spend a few months a year in Cornwall. I think this “outsider” perspective of the natural landscape has defined my painterly world. There is a challenge in my work to the fetishization of England’s “green and pleasant land,” a popular vision of the landscape suspiciously absent of people. But my work also seeks to convey a sense of wonder about nature and the changing seasons in this country too. I think Samuel Palmer’s work is brilliant because it equally appreciates the small human world (a shepherd with his flock) alongside the wild and mysterious (a harvest moon or a golden tree canopy radiant with sunlight).

“My work is a vessel to interrogate various thoughts and feelings about the English countryside,”

Georg Wilson

WW: Your paintings depict landscapes untouched by human presence, where nature exists on its own terms. How do you think about ideas of land, belonging, and preservation in your work, and what draws you to the themes?

GW: The English countryside is an intensely political place, and access to it is an increasingly fraught issue at the moment—which I hope will change. James Rebanks, Guy Shrubsole, Robert Macfarlane, and many other contemporary writers could sum up these ideas better than I can. Painting is my way of exploring some of these feelings about what it’s like to be out in nature without explicitly describing it in words.

It is impossible to imagine England untouched by human presence—people have been farming and altering the land since the Neolithic age, and possibly before—but my work seeks to portray a world where industrialization never took place and the landscape is populated by creatures.

Wild Creatures as Guardians of the Landscape

WW: The creatures in your works—wild, liminal beings—seem to operate as guardians of the landscapes they inhabit. Could you speak to their role in your visual storytelling? Are they manifestations of the land’s spirit, echoes of pre-industrial folklore, or something else entirely?

GW: The creatures in my paintings are wild—probably nonverbal, clawed, and skulking. They inhabit woodlands, rotting tree stumps, underground root systems, ponds, rivers, and hillsides. Entangled with the landscape, they do not have an extractive relationship with nature as humans do. More “animal” than any gender, they exist outside of human hierarchies. These creatures are a way into nature for me, beyond the anxieties of “belonging” or morality.

“These creatures are a way into nature for me,”

Georg Wilson

WW: Your paintings have a distinct material presence, where figures and landscapes seem to dissolve into one another. How do you think about tactility in your work, and what does it mean to you in an era dominated by digital imagery?

GW: The physical, in-person experience of my paintings’ surfaces is important to me. I think most painters would agree that they’d rather have their work seen in person than on a little phone screen. The experience of making this continuous, repeating, swirling brushstroke, which entwines a figure with its surroundings, can be trance-like at times. Although I often use this same swirling mark to portray everything in the painting, the consistency of paint changes. In Of Autumn (in “The Last Oozings” at Pilar Corrias), I thickened the paint with a beeswax medium to match the rotting flesh of the tree stump coated with moss, and in This Stunt Oak, a wetter, looser oil medium was used to evoke a wet sense of liveliness and movement.