There is a sacred quality in Nature which is not immediately apparent, unless we know how to meet it in silence and how to experience it in its tangible earthly presence. It takes form and colour and then dies, only to renew itself through the regular flow of the seasons. Sara Wilson is well acquainted with the seduction of this enchantment. She lifes within her own poetic essence, like Alice in her world of wonder, where Eden rediscovered represents an immutable message of nature, remaining apart from the immanence of reality.

Her spontaneity should not be confused with ingenuousness. Hers is an instinctive quality, a rare and precious gift. Sara Wilson can indeed allow herself the freedom to work on her canvas in a rapid, revelatory manner, always guided by an invisible force, a mysterious energy, a joyousness which pulses through her inner self.

This energetic force has led her from early youth to recognise and celebrate even the smallest detail in the natural world where the poetic element becomes fixed in images of living nature and, at the same time, is transfigured, given the freedom of fantasy.

Part of the history of modern art is to be found in the biography of the English, French and German painters who, in the course of their sojourns in Italy, long or short as these may be, have celebrated the beauty of the Italian landscape, its light, its changing Mediterranean colours.

Only in appearance has the English painter, Sara Wilson, whose professional and family life has for years been bound to Tuscany, allowed herself to be influenced by the natural scenery of Italy, sublimating it in a romantic key.

Her unbounded gift as a painter belonging to the figurative school is in knowing how to be objective in the interpretation of reality without renouncing the poetry of its veracity: the subtle and mysterious aspects are concealed among the flowers and leaves of a rose-bush, in the yellow tones of a sunflower, within a basket of autumn fruit.

With both grace and determination Sara Wilson guides the viewer in the discovery of the ancient nobility of Tuscan olive trees, gnarled and twisted by time yet full of life, in the discovery of the wonderful forms of gourds and the broad horizons of beaches where the waves have left shells and anonymous debris on the sand as though composed for a still life.

The expressive objectivity in Sara Wilson's compositions contains a rare underlying ethicality developed through various themes in which the presence of "reality" is celebrated in a deliberately fundamental manner.

As narrative, these paintings are felicitous, offering various possibilities in their reading, in as much as nature itself offers innumerable perspectives both in form and in colour which we may perceive not only at the physical level but also according to our ever-changing moods.

In this sense Sara Wilson is -to borrow Eugenio Montale's words- a "poetessa laureata" who does not permit herself to be overtaken by pure sentiment: an excess of feeling tends to result in disorder, confusion and, above all, a lack of discipline. Rather, to express herself through the demanding medium of the painter's palette, she has made a precise and determining aesthetic choice: that is, to capture the innocence of nature and translate it into her joyful variations on canvas. A painter without boundaries, she cannot -and I believe does not wish- to abandon her roots in English culture which draw on the unforgettable lessons in composition of some of the great artists of the mid-eighteen hundreds. In the wake of John Millais and of William Henry Hunt, this artist celebrates the beauty of nature without rhetoric, without false splashes of colour.

For the Pre-Raffaelite masters the portrayal of nature constituted a functional background for their mythical-sceno-graphic tales. Instead, for Sara Wilson, a triumph of flowers takes prime place in her visual sensibilities -and pleasure may be found in every one of them: the magical rose-bushes, the paths leading to a distant point of light, the vases of violets, roses and daisies whose spring-like scent is almost perceptible.

The still lifes are equally vibrant: symbolic, of course, but also messages conveying respect and a sense of the sacred, paintings conveying an event, speaking of seasons bound to the harvest.

A mystery is hidden within this palette with its infinitely varied tonalities, in the deep azure of the sea, in the sure touch of an apple's reddish-yellow hues. What we see here is composition or, rather, narration bringing a rediscovered harmony to light, where there is the serene gratification of the mysteries of spring and of autumn, and the metaphysical silences of the sea.

A most appealing aspect of these compositions is to be found in the manner in which a petal is portrayed or the trunk of an olive tree delineated. These are glimpses of nature caught in a warm, changing key; they are paintings of balanced composition, the themes constantly renewed. Her work, in substance, comes to life in the play between suggestion and expressive plot derived from Sara Wilson's masters of the eighteen hundreds.

Sara Wilson's mysticism is one which investigates the beauty and the enigma of nature. She focuses on the subject, observes it, depicts it. She does not emphasise outlines but, rather, tends to compose a mosaic of details, which blend and unite to reveal the treasury of nature.