Botanical Meditations: Guided Art Experience with the Artist

Step into a contemplative space with Oxana Arefin, where art becomes ritual. 

Botanical Meditations is not simply an exhibition of paintings. It is a living, sensory experience of reflection, symbolism and inner discovery. Surrounded by paintings of plants rendered in luminous blue-green and pastel tones, visitors enter an atmosphere of quiet immersion, accompanied by meditative music and the subtle presence of nature.

Each painting is devoted to a single plant, a botanical presence carrying its own mythology, healing associations, cultural memory and symbolic intelligence. Aloe Vera, Guava, Frangipani, Silky Oak, Jacaranda, each holds stories that have moved through civilisations and the human psyche for centuries.

Upon entering, each guest receives, by chance, a written meditation dedicated to one of these plants. This encounter is intentional: like a metaphorical or oracle card, the plant “chooses” the viewer. What appears accidental often feels deeply personal. The text becomes a key, the painting a mirror.
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As participants move through the exhibition, they seek the work connected to their meditation, then spend time in stillness, reading, contemplating, absorbing. The experience unfolds as a gentle dialogue between image, symbol and subconscious response.

​Inspired in part by the Japanese practice of Shinrin-yoku, the restorative act of immersing oneself in the living atmosphere of trees, Botanical Meditations offers a contemporary, poetic equivalent through painting. These works invite a slowing of thought, a return to breath, and an opening of intuition.

​Each painting acts as a visual sanctuary.
Each meditation, a quiet invocation.
​The experience lingers beyond the gallery.

​These paintings suggest something radical in its simplicity: contemplation as nourishment.
A symbolic encounter.
A meditation that finds you.

Beyond the exhibition
​These works are not confined to the gallery space. They carry a quiet presence into the home, extending the experience into daily life through moments of stillness, reflection and subtle connection with the natural world.

Botanical Meditations invites viewers not merely to look at art, but to enter it, and through it, perhaps encounter something waiting quietly within themselves.

Join us for a guided, contemplative experience with Oxana Arefin as part of our 2026 exhibition program in West End.​

Date: Sunday, 24 May 2026
Time: 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Location:  15 Dornoch Terrace, West End 4101
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