Janice Liley: Songs of Thalassa

In Song of Thalassa, Janice Liley draws upon the elemental forces of colour, light, water, and air to explore what it means to be human. The sea, both subject and metaphor, moves through Janice's work as a shifting mirror of emotion, memory, and change. In Greek mythology, Thalassa is the primordial goddess of the sea — the source of all life, vast and unknowable, yet deeply nurturing. Her myth resonates with Janice's search to hold the infinite within a single surface, to find stillness within movement, and to express the tension between creation and calm.

Each painting begins without a title or fixed intent. Janice follows the rhythm of the brush, the pull of colour, allowing the work to unfold in its own time. The titles arrive later, once Janice senses what the painting wants to reveal. These works are meditations on belonging and impermanence, on the quiet power of nature and the mystery that lies beneath it. Janice hopes they invite contemplation — to leave the viewer touched by that same vastness they feel when standing before a vast ocean.