When I Let Her Out to Play: Expanding Memories by Veronica Rowlands - Private View

When I Let Her Out to Play: Expanding Memories presents an amplified body of work by East London–based artist Veronica Rowlands, continuing her exploration of nostalgia, sensory memory, the rediscovery of the inner-child and the emotional tactility of play.

Working with vivid colour, whimsical characters, and spontaneous mark-making, Rowlands creates immersive, dreamlike worlds that invite viewers into a softer emotional register. Her background in textiles shapes her sensitivity to materials that soothe, wrap, and protect. Fur, fabric, and embellishments emerge from the surfaces like contemporary transitional objects, quietly activating sensory memories often beneath adult awareness. A pivotal moment in Rowlands’ practice came after a project exploring the stages of the narcissistic abuse cycle. Through collaborative textile processes, she observed the profound role inner-child healing can play in recovery.

Veronica’s MA research and community-based creative initiatives further reinforced how attachment is frequently entwined with subtle elements of loss, longing, or transition. These emotional nuances inform the playful, dreamlike narratives across her canvases, where creatures act as companions navigating landscapes of tenderness, mischief, and memory. Developed from the series first exhibited at the Portman and Tavistock NHS Trust in 2025, this new presentation at the James Wigg Practice, When I Let Her Out to Play: Expanding Memories invites viewers into a world where softness becomes a form of strength, intuition becomes a bridge to early emotional states, and play, essential, enlivening, and unreplicable, reconnects us with our most imaginative and vital selves.