Nicky Foreman: Daphne and Apollo

One of my favourite pieces of art is Bernini’s sculpture ‘Daphne and Apollo’ in the Galleria Borghese in Rome.

The myth of Daphne and Apollo tells the story of a nymph, Daphne, who is relentlessly pursued by the god Apollo. Daphne, daughter of the river god Peneus, is determined to remain a virgin and resists Apollo’s advances. In a desperate attempt to escape him, she calls upon her father for help and he transforms her into a laurel tree. Apollo, heartbroken but still enamoured with the tree, declares it sacred to him and vows to wear its leaves as a symbol of love and victory.

 I am fascinated by the way Daphne's fingers are turning into the laurel leaves, the way Bernini does that is truly exquisite. The sweeping upward movement of the sculpture, the energy of it. I started to think about why it struck such a chord, and it was this idea of nature as an escape, a road to safety, and of the metamorphosis from one state into another. This also makes me think of one of my other favourite works- ‘Jupiter and Io’ by Correggio, where Jupiter turns himself into a cloud to caress Io. These ideas were my beginning point for this body of work.

I have always been attracted to the ornate, the delicate, but also the mundane and overlooked in art and nature. The tile and multi panel formats are a way for me to array all these glimpses, these aspects, these miniatures, something like an enthusiastic collector who wishes to make a coherent presentation without needing to strive for any perfect unity. 

The idea for this format also comes from a shallow tiled pool at the Fondation Maeght in France. This is a place dear to my heart, especially for the way the art there communicates so effortlessly with the surrounding nature.

 The tiles modulate the drives for order versus chaos, wholes and parts, the need to relate and often repeat, to spill over or to be contained. One could see them as meditative, like a walk in nature where glimpses seem to repeat and yet alter at the same time, like a shifting pattern.

 As much as there is an array of images, there are an array of influences on my work. From the gestural mark making and difficulty of Cy Twombly I take a stubborn individualism, an element of boldness and ambiguity. I respond to the interlocking shapes of European architecture, especially that of the Baroque architect Borromini, who corrals forms in the most unusual and yet beautiful manner. I've always had a love affair with the work of Cezanne. His palette of mauves and lilacs against subtle variations of green are South of France colours. His painting is a play of solid versus delicate, grounded and romantic both, and I aim to emulate this spirit in my work.

Odile Redon’s ‘Trees on a yellow background’ 1901 has inspired my fascination with painting lichen. I feel a nice reflexivity here, for as much as these panels are a departure, they have the same concern with the ornate, the miniature, pattern and a sense of burgeoning, as if they could go on forever. They pick up where the laurel leaves leave off. If you will forgive the pun. I became entranced with them in the way a photographer with a macro lens becomes fixated on the nuances of their subject and cannot help but take more shots.

 All in all, these works are about noticing and appreciating beauty and the balancing properties of nature on our state of mind.

Nicky Foreman

August 2025