New Problems, the Lockdown Works – Are currently on view at Simon Lee Gallery, London. All of the paintings exhibited were made during lockdown in an intense and isolated period which allowed Woods to occupy a position where she could compare the past and the idea of the future closely as the present was so unrecognisable and uncomfortable.

“I found it so hard to describe what I was feeling and the only way it could be translated into something real was through painting it. I quickly adjusted to a new routine of going to the studio early in the morning and painting all day without the normal work distractions braking up the day and the week. Working on a smaller scale allowed a different time space to paint, allowing an intermit relation to the smaller panel size and to be able to experiment and offer more freedom to make rejects.”

Woods was trying to capture those moments in the home and the focus shift for outside to inside where everything familiar felt unfamiliar and where the detail in the everyday became heightened and created a discomfort, but also allowed a way of seeing the ordinary in a different way. A more heightened way. “I felt as thought I was occupying a position on both sides of a boundary of a very transformative space.”