BIOGRAPHY

I spent much of my childhood roaming the deep English countryside. As an only child living in the middle if nowhere, I had plenty of time to exercise my imagination, talking to plants, negotiating with insects, brewing questionable potions, and building dens in the woods. Happy days spent helping my grandparents in their vegetable garden grew into a lifelong love of growing things and an expensive houseplant habit.

At the first taste of freedom, and hungry for creative connection, I headed for the big city. I studied fashion, art, and illustration, and was promptly seduced by streetlights, markets, and long nights under the disco ball. It was loud, excessive, and full of colour, a different kind of ecosystem.

Later, motherhood arrived and the parties quietly fell away, replaced by another kind of wildlife. Nights grew shorter, mornings earlier, and my attention shifted to foxes at dawn, snails on the pavement, and the small, feral rhythms of growing things at home. Without much ceremony, the wild moved closer again.

In my practice, these landscapes still rub up against each other. Soil and spectacle, moss and neon, patience and glitter are mixed together like the ingredients of a spell. I work across collage, drawing, painting, print, and digital media, building densely layered surfaces that feel grown rather than designed. There is no fixed plan, though each piece begins with an intention to capture a particular spirit and transmit a specific energy. Through this process, I invite a reconnection with what is felt rather than seen.

My work hovers between the familiar and the otherworldly, shaped by folklore, spiritual cosmology, scratchy old soul 7 inch records, and the visual language of half forgotten manuals and rituals. The process is intuitive, occasionally unruly, and led more by spirit than by reason.

I live and work in Bath, letting the seasons and motherhood do much of the scheduling.

Email: info@victoriatopping.com

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