“I like when you can’t pin a work down, categorise it or close it, and you keep coming back.” There’s a cheekiness to this response, which appropriately sums up the intent of his work.

Newling is adept at drawing in viewers with depictions of the serious and the questionable. A small red car finds itself half-submerged in a lake–the driver seemingly resigned to his sunken fate. “Ambiguity, enigma or curiosity remains and the imagination and responses can continue to unfold.” Prolonged exploration of Newling’s works often leaves the viewer with more questions than answers. His work A Pickle… drumming up the strange and anxious feeling of seeing a familiar object in an eerily unfamiliar context.

Despite the wide-ranging subject matter of his work, most of Newling’s vignettes depict scenes that aren’t too distant from our own reality. Many of these daily occurrences could easily form part of our everyday landscapes. However, the artist’s restrained application of colour is, in some instances, a solemn reminder of their fleeting nature.

Whilst reliving the past few years may not be at the top of everyone’s to-do lists, Dylan Newling will be exhibiting these works in February during the BFA graduation show at the National Art School. They offer a refreshing glance at periods of reflection and will inspire us not to take our everyday surroundings for granted.

Newling’s work reminds us that we don’t need to travel far to find inspiration. And with travelling far currently off the table for many, we can consider ourselves lucky knowing that pockets of inspiration and quaint beauty are still close by.