TOPOPHILIA
Landscapes of Belonging
Welcome, and thank you for being here.
Here you’ll find English texts for Topophilia: Landscapes of Belonging, inviting you into the poetry, creative processes, and nourishing wisdoms that have shaped these artworks.
Topophilia: love of place
In this exhibition, Cath Duncan explores how a love of place shapes our memories, identities, and sense of belonging. First used by poet W. H. Auden (1947) and later popularised by geographer Yi-Fu Tuan (1974), topophilia describes the emotional bond between people and the landscapes they inhabit.
Mirroring the artist’s creative process, the exhibition offers a dialogue between poetry and art. Poems and titles are presented in English to honour their original voice. A prominent colour throughout the collection, terracotta speaks of earth, ancestry, and grounding - the places and histories that hold us. Blue hues evoke sky and water, the air we all share, and a sense of expansiveness. Together, they express the tension and harmony between rootedness and openness.
Vertical lines and hard edges in the artworks suggest the real and imagined boundaries that shape our lives: political borders, social identities, physical limits, and rigid ways of thinking. Yet where colours and textures bleed, the works open into moments of connection, renewal, and the possibility of rebuilding our lives across literal and figurative borders. As you move through the exhibition, you’re invited to consider how nature itself teaches us to thrive in diversity, and shows us how to transcend boundaries and heal.
About Cath Duncan
Cath Duncan has exhibited in South Africa, the Netherlands, and the UK, with work held in private collections worldwide. Working from her studio in Utrecht, she draws on her first career in grief support therapy and personal experiences with immigration, disability, transracial adoption, and organ transplantation. She describes her art-making as “an exploration of how we stay connected to pleasure, play, and hope in the midst of grief and fear.” More >>>
The Stories Within The Artworks
Mount the Hidden Tide and Travel Back Home (2025)
Recycled painted paper on canvas
150 × 120 cm
€2950
Inspired by Hafiz’s poem, All the Hemispheres, this abstract seascape is about an inner journey. Boat-like forms drift across a shoreline toward the glow of a sun, moon, or the poem’s “Great Circle inside of you” rising on the horizon. Rich reds and pinks in chamber-like shapes evoke the feeling of being inside a living heart. The work speaks to the quiet courage of traveling beyond what is familiar, and the deeper voyage of finding your way back home to yourself - the birthplace of all belonging.
Now Hemmed In, Now Grasping All (2025)
Recycled painted paper and acrylic on canvas
100 × 120 cm
€1900
This watery abstract landscape reflects the movement between the grief of loss and the grace of renewal described in Rilke’s poem, Evening. Vertical divisions evoke borders between nations and selves, while soft gradients open toward moments of connection and transcendence. Like the poem, the work expresses the delicate balance of being human: shaped by limits, yet continually reaching toward connection and new beginnings.
As the Sun Moves Through the Sky (2025)
Acrylic on canvas
70 × 80 cm
€860
The only fully painted work in the collection, this abstract landscape traces the quiet journey of sunlight across the canvas through shifting blocks of colour. In the foreground, sky appears where land might be expected, suggesting the deep interconnectedness between the two. Like so much in life that we speak of as separate - people from one another, or humans from nature - sky and land are, in truth, continuous. Air moves not only above us but through soil, water, and every living being, entering our bodies with each breath. This painting reflects that shared, porous world: one atmosphere, one ecology, one belonging.
Tethered in the Drift (2025)
Recycled painted paper on stretched canvas
70 × 80 cm
€860
Soft blues, terracottas, and ochres form an abstract landscape where land-like shapes tilt and hang from sky-like colour blocks. The work evokes moments of disorientation, uncertainty, and grief - when the ground seems to slip away and what we thought we knew is no longer certain. Yet within these shifting forms and colours, if we look for it, there is still always a tether: a sense of grounding, connection, and balance.
The Sky Was (2025)
Recycled painted paper and acrylic on canvas
80 × 70 cm
€860
This work began in pure delight - an immersion in the colours, textures, and vastness of the sky. I wanted the sky and land to feel integrated rather than separate or hierarchical, because in truth they belong to one another, despite the divisions we often impose in our minds. The process was playful and sensory, guided by the simple joy of exploring colour, shape, and movement. The resulting artwork feels open and cheerful, peaceful yet alive. When I later read E.E Cummings’ poem, The Sky Was, it felt as though we had been looking at the very same sky.
Sunburnt Sands and Sky Everywhere (2025)
Recycled painted paper on canvas
50 × 50 cm
€480
This abstract landscape weaves terracotta and blue into a quiet dialogue between earth and sky. Land and atmosphere slip into one another, creating a delicate balance between groundedness and openness. The piece reflects the way these forces - solidity and spaciousness, rootedness and expansion - coexist in constant relationship, shaping both the natural world and our inner landscapes.
What the Wind Wants You To Know (2025)
Recycled painted paper on canvas
80 × 80 cm
€950
Created through an intuitive process of choosing textures, shapes, and colours that felt alive in the moment, this abstract landscape reflects the gentle guidance nature offers. The work evokes the way wind, weather, and open spaces can steady us, reveal quiet wisdom, and reconnect us to something larger than ourselves. In its layered fragments and flowing forms, the painting suggests how the natural world speaks - not in words, but through sensations, metaphors, and moments of stillness that invite us to listen.
Harbourless Blue (2025)
Recycled painted paper on wood panel
40 × 50 cm
€500
This abstract seascape speaks to the experience of uncertainty - of moving through life without a clear harbour to rest in, and with future shores still out of sight. It invites a shift of attention: to notice the beauty of the present moment, even when it is temporary, and perhaps especially because it is temporary. Harbourless Blue is a reminder not to let fear of the unknown eclipse what is luminous and available right now, in the in-between spaces where we often grow the most.
What the Falling Leaves Whisper Back (2025)
Recycled painted paper and acrylic on canvas
90 × 80 cm
€1050
This abstract landscape captures the shimmer of autumn trees mirrored in still water - a moment of quiet release and radiant colour. This poem written in response by Cath’s friend, Beth Baugh, captures the artwork’s spirit of gentle surrender:
There is joy
In letting go,
In flying into
The unknown
With abandon,
Seeing
How the sunlight
Illuminates our friends
And finally realizing
We shine as brightly.
The painting invites viewers into that same recognition: the beauty in release, the glow in one another, and the light we carry within ourselves.
Carried By a Sea That Also Lives in Me (2025)
Recycled painted paper collage on wood panel
30 × 30 cm
€295, including frame
This small abstract seascape evokes the constant movement and depth of the ocean - both around us and within us. Layered textures and flowing forms suggest how we are carried by forces larger than ourselves, yet intimately connected to them. The work reflects the ebb and flow of life, emotions, and experience, reminding us that the currents of the world, nature, and of our own hearts are all inseparable.
You Too Have Come Into the World To Do This (2025)
Recycled painted paper and acrylic on canvas
90 × 80 cm
€1050
The title of this work comes from the closing line of Mary Oliver’s poem, When I Am Among the Trees: “…and you too have come into the world to do this, / to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.” As I created this piece, I practiced that invitation: to go easy, loosen my grip, and trust the process. The work carries that sense of openness and light - a reminder that beauty, meaning, and belonging can unfold when we allow ourselves simply to be.
Everything Falling, Everything Rising (2025)
Recycled painted paper on canvas
70 × 80 cm
€860
This abstract seascape, set beneath a high horizon, moves in the same rhythms that shape both nature and human life. Its layered forms could be rising toward the light or drifting downward from it - mirroring how our emotions, energy, successes, and even our breath rise and fall. Like tides that ebb and return, the work reflects the cyclical movement of the natural world. It suggests that to rise and to fall is not failure, but part of being human, alive, and deeply connected to the earth to which we belong.
Cold Air, Open Heart (2025)
Recycled painted paper on canvas
40 × 40 cm
€425, including frame
Soft browns, blues, and creams shape this abstract winter landscape, echoing the clarity and quiet beauty of a cold-weather walk. It reflects the way crisp air can clear the mind, invigorate the body, and gently open the heart. The artwork also speaks to the gifts that wait just beyond our comfort zones - those moments when what first feels inhospitable becomes nourishing once we step into it with curiosity and courage.
Even the Hard Edges Sing (2025)
Recycled painted paper on wood panel
30 × 30 cm
€295, including frame
Composed of sharp shapes and strong divisions, this piece embraces the presence of hard edges. While boundaries can feel confining, they can also offer clarity, simplicity, and a place to begin. In this artwork, distinct colours and textures meet without blending, revealing how contrast itself can create harmony. Even the Hard Edges Sing suggests that beauty is found not only in softness, but also in the places where differences stand side by side and illuminate one another.
Seeds of Belonging (2025)
Recycled painted paper on wood panel
44.5 × 44.5 cm
€695, including frame
Each of these nine small abstract landscapes stands beautifully on its own, yet together they form a larger image: a grafted fruit tree. Like Flourishing Graft, Seeds of Belonging explores how connection and difference can grow side by side, and how diverse parts can come together to create new life. Each panel represents an individual contribution - a small act of tending, belonging, or hope. When joined, they form something greater: a vision of what becomes possible when we care for one another and for the world we share.
Flourishing Graft (2025)
Recycled painted paper on stretched canvas
100 × 100 cm
Not for sale
Flourishing Graft depicts a grafted fruit tree bearing both lemons and oranges - a vision of harmony through difference. Its overlapping circles represent fruit, family, and the relational worlds that make up our societies and sense of belonging. In an age of ecological and social fragmentation, Flourishing Graft offers a hopeful metaphor for resilience: that flourishing is possible through diversity and interdependence.
Creative Process
I love to work with recycled painted brown packaging papers - papers that once protected, cleaned, or wrapped. Many already bear traces of earlier creative moments from being used as table coverings, colour tests, and brush-cleaning sheets. By painting, tearing, layering, and reassembling them, I offer these materials a renewed life and meaning. This process of re-imagining, layering, and grafting feels like an act of regeneration. It’s a reminder that beauty can grow out of what has been discarded, that nothing need be wasted, and that social and ecological renewal is both possible and deeply rewarding.
I mostly work intuitively, beginning with a suggestion of a landscape or seascape and a colour palette, and then allowing the artwork to unfold as I go. I rarely know in advance what the finished piece will look like or what it will ultimately mean. Flourishing Graft and Seeds of Belonging are the exceptions: for these works I created many preparatory sketches and held a clear vision of the outcome from the very beginning. Usually, it is only near the end of a piece that its themes and emotional resonances start to reveal themselves. Sometimes, as this understanding gathers shape, I’ll come across a poem that seems to articulate the artwork’s spirit, and a title emerges from the connection between the poem and the painting.
Reading poetry inspires me, deepens my observational sensitivity, and offers metaphors and phrases that enrich my life and creative exploration. Several titles in Topophilia echo lines from poets who write of human longing and grief, and of nature’s beauty, intelligence, fragility, and awe. There is also a poem written by one of my friends, Beth Baugh, in response to the artwork, “What the Falling Leaves Whisper Back”. The poems and artworks together form a dialogue - art and language as twin vessels for expressing what is felt but often difficult to say.
Watch the full journey of an artwork…
Below is a short reel you can watch, showing the full journey of “Red Dust and Eucalyptus” - the first artwork in the Topophilia Series.
Thank you for visiting.
I hope this exhibition leaves you with something that can take root - an image, a feeling, or a question - that supports the flourishing of creativity, connection, and belonging in your everyday life.
If you’d like to buy an artwork, please email me at cath@cathduncan.com or whatsapp me on +31-6-27-97-73-66. I’ll be happy to schedule a phone call or meet you at Castellum Hoge Woerd.
If you’d like to stay in touch, you’re warmly invited to follow along on Instagram or sign up for my Studio Notes newsletter, where I share reflections, process, and news of future exhibitions.
