This exhibition is the culmination of two years’ work exploring moral decay, shifting cultural values and the changing ways in which society understands and transmits its beliefs. Drawing on folklore, mythology, fairy tales and familiar aphorisms, the paintings consider the role these narratives have historically played in shaping our understanding of morality, empathy and our responsibilities to one another.

Traditionally, stories and aphorisms carried forms of folk wisdom between generations, their meanings sustained through oral tradition, personal relationships and shared experience. Today, these narratives exist within a culture increasingly mediated by digital technology. I am interested in how this changes our relationship with the values they contain, and whether the immediacy and scale of digital communication risk diminishing the human context through which those values acquire meaning.

The work reflects my concerns about changes in human behaviour and the increasingly uncertain relationship between morality, empathy and cultural identity. Rather than offering definitive answers, the paintings invite viewers to question what is being lost, altered or carried forward as the culture around us changes.

Technique is integral to this enquiry. Working in oil, I employ layered, indirect painting methods informed by the Old Masters, including imprimatura, grisaille and glazing. These processes demand time, attention and sustained engagement with the image. Their emphasis on tradition, materiality and craftsmanship sits in deliberate tension with the speed and transience of contemporary digital culture.

I hope viewers will look beyond the immediate image, consider the relationship between each painting and its title, and discover how familiar narratives might acquire new meanings in the present. The work asks what we choose to carry forward when the culture that gave those things meaning is disappearing.

Dylan Lisle October 2026