How Solenn Heussaff translates grief and joy into abstraction

“I never thought I would get into abstract art, and I still love figurative work,” she shared. “I guess it is nice if I have a big themed exhibit, then I will do figurative pieces. However, I feel like if it is as a whole with other people, I think it is nicer to have abstract works. It leaves more room for interpretation for everybody. Also, since I moved to a house with my children, I just feel like I want clean things in my house—something that I want to look at every day. I feel sometimes, with faces, it is hard. So right now, this is my direction, but who knows where it is going to go.”

This artistic pivot also demanded a complete overhaul of her creative process. Abstract painting requires a delicate balance; without it, a canvas can easily look disorganised. She experienced this struggle firsthand while working on her initial pieces for the collection. Stuck on a highly detailed, dark forest landscape, she sought a peer’s opinion, who pointed out that the piece felt intimidating.

Determined to find the right emotional frequency, she took a highly physical and unconventional approach. “I always turn my paintings around to look for a different angle,” she explained, describing how she eventually inverted the dark canvas entirely. Pushing her boundaries further, she abandoned her brushes altogether for certain pieces. “I completely changed, and from then on, I just experimented with my hands and fingers.”

Beneath the vibrant colours and textured botanicals of The Unseen Garden lies a profoundly moving emotional core. Heussaff channels her current life transitions into the canvas, balancing the radiant joy of motherhood with the heavy reality of her father’s battle with dementia.

“Most of these works are based on the fact that I am going through a lot of changes in my life,” Heussaff revealed. “My dad is going through dementia, so I had all these mixed feelings. It is the happiness and the joy that life brings me because of my family and the connections I make, but also the mourning of someone who is still here, but not anymore.”

This poignant duality is best captured in the exhibition’s focal piece, a massive seven-by-five-foot painting titled Where The Hortensias Sing. Although the abstract nature of the work obscures literal interpretations, the sweeping pink areas of the canvas represent hortensias—her father’s favourite flowers.

The painting is filled with dynamic movement, signifying that life is constantly shifting and changing. Heussaff intentionally blurred certain elements of the piece to represent how identity and memory fade over time. However, she balanced this with bright, hopeful colours to signal that new things can still emerge from the sorrow. Reflecting on her father’s fading memory, she shared a heartbreaking yet beautiful sentiment: “I just feel like one day I will find him again in a garden of hortensias.”

The Unseen Garden is showcased as part of the Bridging the Gap 2 initiative of Provenance Art Gallery, a format that features works from multiple talented Filipino artists sharing a single, accessible space at Power Plant Mall, Rockwell Center in Makati City. Heussaff appreciates the collaborative energy this brings, noting that showcasing her work alongside other creatives motivates her to continue learning and evolving her techniques.

Furthermore, placing the exhibition inside a bustling mall strips away the intimidation often associated with traditional, quiet art galleries. She enjoys seeing young children and casual passersby pop in to view the art, allowing them a moment of reprieve.

Ultimately, The Unseen Garden is an invitation to pause and reflect. By drawing viewers into intimate botanical studies and larger arched landscapes that suggest passageways into new psychological terrains, the collection captures the ecosystem of human emotions.

“I hope people leave feeling like they have slowed down, even just for a moment,” Heussaff stated. “We live in a world where we are constantly moving and consuming, and I wanted this exhibition to be a reminder that there is so much beauty we miss when we do not take the time to really look. The Unseen Garden is about those quiet things that often go unnoticed in nature, in our memories, and in ourselves. If someone walks away feeling a little more curious, a little more connected, or simply inspired to pay closer attention to the world around them, then I feel the work has done what it was meant to do.”

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