Maps of the Interior: An Exhibition of Paintings and Illustrations
[September 2026]
Hello dear friend! This is the monthly newsletter/blog of artist and illustrator Nicola Fouché. If you missed last month's one — Sketchbook Drawings and The Time-Keeper's Sphere— you can catch up on it here. If a friend forwarded you my newsletter/blog, and you would like to subscribe (it's free!), you can do so at the bottom of this newsletter or on my website. If you enjoy my stories and ramblings, please consider sharing and subscribing. Your support means the world. |
Dear friends, family and fellow art lovers,
September is my favourite month of the year. It is always filled with the birthdays of loved ones (my own included), dinner parties and celebratory outings. This year my husband and I held a dinner party at our house for all of our friends to celebrate my 35th birthday with me. Dee and I cooked up a storm, laying out a delicious spread of Cape Malay Tamatie Bredie (Tomato Stew), bananas rolled in fresh coconut, tomato and cucumber sambal and freshly baked sourdough ciabatta. And for dessert, Dee baked an unhealthy amount of way too gorgeous carrot cake heaped with cream cheese icing. I love birthdays and I love celebrating birthdays; it's one of the uncomplicated joys in life.
And as an added birthday gift, I was given the opportunity to exhibit my work at a restaurant/gallery/event space in Thao Dien, Ho Chi Minh City. They host one artist a month, year-round, and September was given to me. The exhibition opened on the 12th of September and will run until the 10th of October. So if you happen to be in Ho Chi Minh, please drop by Soma Saigon in D2 and have a look at my work. All artworks want to be seen. For those of you who are very far away, I have also created a curated online catalogue of the exhibition. It is available on my website, here. All of the pieces in the exhibition are for sale directly through me. And yes, I am able to ship internationally, as long as you are willing to bear with me in navigating the cumbersome logistics of our current international shipping world.
Hanging up my work at Soma Saigon
I gave a short talk at the opening on the 12th of September, and I would like to share with you some of what I said there.
"Welcome to the opening of Maps of the Interior. This is the first time that I am exhibiting work here in Ho Chi Minh City and am very grateful to Soma Saigon for the opportunity. It is also the first time that I am exhibiting my illustrations alongside my paintings. The pieces you see here are a curated selection of pieces from various bodies of work that I have been working on over the past 3 years.
I have noticed that there is a strange division in the art world between illustration and the finer arts. Im not sure what the reasons are for this, but I have an inkling that "seriousness" and a dash of "highbrow-ness" may play a role. At university, illustration falls squarely under visual communication design and graphic design, and so I, as a fine art student didn’t really get into illustration until after I graduated. I carried this separation of disciplines within me for a long time, until I realised not too long ago, that it was no longer helpful to my creative practice to separate my various disciplines into neat categories. I am first and foremost a creator, in service to my internal world and the flow of inspiration, and these neatly divided boundaries between disciplines were getting in the way of that. Allowing my work to exist and be exhibited alongside one another, creates conversations amongst the various pieces which, offers a deeper understanding of my work as whole..."
Maps of the Interior: An Exhibition of Paintings and Illustrations, 12 September to 10 October 2026 at Soma Saigon, District 2, Ho Chi Minh City.
"The greatest difficulty with exhibiting abstract paintings and drawings, is that there is always the risk that the deeper narratives within the work may stay hidden. Unless you are someone who already has an understanding of abstract art and is familiar with the language of colour and mark-making, the work may remain largely opaque. The onus thus lies on the artist to guide you into their universe in a way that illuminates what they do, which is no easy task. My hope, with this exhibition, is that my illustrations are able to serve as much better guides than my words, to help you gain a deeper insight and understanding of my artistic practice. They are very obvious representations of the inner realms I explore within my practice, and serve as bridges between the natural abstraction of my paintings/drawings ."
Preparing my work for the exhibition
"I am an inner-explorer, a map-maker of sorts. My work has, and perhaps always will be, a journey and an exploration into my own internal realm. I am fascinated by the complex universes that we each carry within, and I situate my creative practice as a means to explore my own. My art practice is both a place of creative experimentation and a refuge during difficult times. It serves as an anchor, aiding my desire to stay curious even when my internal world is stormy and tumultuous. The works that you see here are explorations into, as well as articulations of these interior and other-wise hidden worlds. I don’t believe that we consciously choose the nature of the artworks or themes that we work with. They choose us. And so one of our duties, as artists and creative beings is to be open to the mysterious nature of inspiration and creativity, so that they may reveal us to ourselves. It’s an allowing in of what Elizabeth Gilbert calls “Big Magic”. What a wonderful journey; and what a joy it is to be able to share it with you all. Thank you for coming..."
Opening night of "Maps of the Interior" on the 12th of September.
There is a deep joy in being able to exhibit and talk about my work. So much of what I do and how I spend my time is done in the solitude of my home and studio; but there comes a time when what has been carefully crafted and created needs to be shown and shared. I do believe that that is a desire carried by my artworks themselves, too. These pieces, these alchemical objects of colour and mark-making and emotion are not inert or inanimate. They are very much alive, imbued with a sense of being-ness and an essence of the artist as my friend Nora likes to refer to it. And just like each of us, artworks of this nature also have a deep yearning to be seen and understood. This is also where the true value of art lies, not as a financial investment, but as an emotional and perhaps even a spiritual one. The spirit in which and with which an artwork was created will seep into the space where it hangs, and into the hearts of the people who live alongside it everyday. To me, it serves a similar purpose to that of a garden and nature, namely to lighten the heart and connect us with something far greater than ourselves.
Thank you for being here. May you find joy in my work! And please send me a message if you enjoyed my exhibition (online or offline). The best part about showing my work publicly is the connections and conversations which come out of it.
All my love,
Nicola
PS. As always, if you enjoyed my musings and know of anyone who might also enjoy my writings please forward my newsletter/blog to them, your support will be greatly appreciated. I would also love to hear from you. So any responses or comments or creative stories of your own that you might have and would like to share with me, let me know.
*I read all responses and comments so if you have anything you would like to share with me, please send me an email. *
It surely is a Brave New World when I need to start ending off my newsletters/blogs with the statement that this newsletter/blog was fully written by me using my fallible human mind and hands. I have never, and will never use AI to write it for me, as the writing of these newsletters serve as a kind of month-in-review for me, and that is invaluable. The same goes for my artwork, illustrations and photographs. All images, photographs, illustrations and artworks which you see in my newsletters/blogs were created by me, by hand in the real world, unless otherwise credited. |
In Other News...
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