> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.catapult-platform.art/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Jie Zhang: Painting Gardens as Thresholds of Time - URL: https://www.catapult-platform.art/jie-zhang-painting-gardens-as-thresholds-of-time/ - Published: 2025-09-26T10:00:14.000Z - Updated: 2025-09-26T10:00:14.000Z - Description: Jie Zhang’s poetic paintings at The Koppel Project, London explore gardens as metaphors for memory, growth, and the contradictions of existence. - Author: Dominique Catherina Foertig - Tags: Artist in Focus ## Between Thorns and Light: The Quiet Force of Jie Zhang’s Canvases [**Jie Zhang’s**](https://www.instagram.com/zhangzhi.studio/?ref=catapult-platform.art) paintings carry the quiet gravity of lived time: not linear, not fixed, but layered like petals, like tides. ![Jie Zhang. London based contemporary artist painting garden themes.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2025/09/jie-zhang-london-contemporary-art-garden-theme.webp) ****Jie Zhang**: The Thorn I oil on canvas 80x70cm 2025\. Image courtesy of the artist Her recent works, shown at The [**Koppel Project in London**](https://thekoppelproject.com/?ref=catapult-platform.art), emerge from the tension between memory and transformation, always returning to a central image - the garden. [The Koppel ProjectThe Koppel Project (est. 2016) is an arts charity, gallery, and creative hub based in London. We aim to support early and mid-career artists by offering affordable studios and communal spaces.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/icon/favicon-26.ico)The Koppel Project![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/thumbnail/600ef8cef98f57d5305ec82bd851593066c0191a-2856x1904.jpg)](https://thekoppelproject.com/?ref=catapult-platform.art) Explore more on what the Koppel Project London is supporting ![Jie Zhang. green bluel painting of a garden in detail](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2025/09/jie-zhang-oil-painting-london-contemporary-artist.webp) ****Jie Zhang**: The Ghost of Tulips oil on canvas 80x60cm 2024\. Image courtesy of the artist Born in China and now based in London, Zhang’s practice weaves painting and poetry into one continuous voice. ![installation vie artworks exhibition](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2025/09/jie-zhang-chinese-painter-forest-inspired-oil.-1.webp) ****Jie Zhang**: White flowers I oil on canvas 140x130cm. Exhibition view. Image courtesy of the artist She grew up surrounded by gardens, moving often between homes, landscapes, and social expectations. That restlessness sharpened her sensitivity to place, to growth, and to cycles of belonging and estrangement. Poetry became her language of doubt, painting her way of holding contradiction. ![2 blue paintings by the artist hanging on the wall](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2025/09/jie-zhang-figurative-abstract-painting-nature-contemporary.webp) ****Jie Zhang**: Dense Forest oil on canvas 60x40cm 2025\. Image courtesy of the artist The canvases themselves oscillate between figuration and abstraction: thickets of brushwork dissolve into luminous openings; dark, thorned zones give way to fragile bursts of bloom. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2025/09/jie-zhang--oil-painting-blue-flowers-1.jpg) ****Jie Zhang:** The Thorn II oil on canvas 80x70cm 2022.jpg In works such as *Dense Forest I & II* (2025) and *Garden* (2025), Zhang refuses the false clarity of categories. These are not landscapes, nor pure abstraction. They are metaphors built from the textures of reality - moments of vulnerability and resilience made visible. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2025/09/Garden-oil-on-canvas-152x121cm-2025.jpg) ****Jie Zhang:** Garden oil on canvas 152x121cm 2025\. Image courtesy the artist The garden functions less as motif than as structure: a symbolic terrain linking past, present, and imagined futures. Here, time is felt not as chronology but as rhythm, a slow accumulation of marks. Wrinkles, layers, waves: painting as a form of lived repetition. Each work embodies both fragility and force, softness and thorn. ![Jie Zhang light pastel colors, water color of a woman](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2025/09/Dense-Forest-I_oil-on-canvas-2025-1.webp) ****Jie Zhang :** Dense Forest I, oil on canvas 2025\. Image courtesy of the artist Her references extend beyond the autobiographical. Buddhist cosmology and natural science surface in the work, not as illustrations but as worldviews. They frame the paintings as spaces of healing and reflection, where universal conditions - mortality, change, freedom - remain visible. ![Jie Zhang deep forest painting in blue](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2025/09/Dense-Forest-II_oil-on-canvas-2025-1.webp) ****Jie Zhang :** Dense Forest II oil on canvas 2025\. Image courtesy of the artist Zhang’s paintings do not attempt to resolve contradictions; instead, they keep them alive, rendering doubt itself a generative space. ![Jie Zhang garden painting in green with a woman that looks like the artist](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2025/09/jie-zhang-contemporary-artist-china-london-poetic-1.webp) ****Jie Zhang :** Was, am, will be, In the garden 2023 oil on canvas 60x50cm. Image courtesy of the artist What lingers in the room is atmosphere: the hush of a threshold, the way color seems to hesitate before deepening, the sense of an image about to dissolve. These are works that resist spectacle. ![Jie Zhang:painting of nature in darker purple like colors. Image courtesy of the artist](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2025/09/jie-zhang--artist--painting--1.jpg) ****Jie Zhang:** "Untitled" charcoal, water, oil, pastel on paper 70x50cm. Image courtesy of the artist Their intensity lies in duration, the longer you stay, the more they begin to breathe.In a cultural moment dominated by immediacy, Zhang’s practice insists on slowness. ![Jie Zhang artist Installation view, exhibition. Image courtesy of the artist](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2025/09/jie-zhang-garden-inspired-contemporary-painting.webp) ****Jie Zhang**: Installation view. Image courtesy of the artist The paintings ask us to stay with uncertainty, to attend to growth that is cyclical rather than linear, to perceive softness as a form of strength. ![Jie Zhang studio view](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2025/09/jie-zhang-contemporary-chinese-artist-london-based.webp) ****Jie Zhang**: Studio view. Image courtesy of the artist They remind us that every garden is both fragile and enduring, an archive of what has faded and a promise of what continues. --- Follow [**Jie Zhang on Instagram**](https://www.instagram.com/zhangzhi.studio/?ref=catapult-platform.art) for more of her poetic paintings and garden worlds. --- ### Time for more reads? Check out: [Moemi Yamamoto: Dreaming in TimelessnessMoemi Yamamoto merges Japanese aesthetics with Gothic symbolism, creating dreamlike, introspective paintings that explore timelessness, alienation, and subconscious realms.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/icon/munchies-art-club-magazine-290.png)Catapult - The New Munchies Art Club MagazineDominique Catherina Foertig![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/thumbnail/moemi-yamamoto-3.webp)](https://www.catapult-platform.art/moemi-yamamoto-dreaming-in-timelessness/) [Hugo Brazão: Sculpting Escapism in a World of Fabric, Fiction, and FormStep into the immersive world of Hugo Brazão, where sculpture, textile, and painting blur into vibrant spaces of memory, fiction, and escapism. In this in-depth interview, the artist reflects on childhood clay, cruel optimism, and the power of color as both camouflage and rebellion.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/icon/munchies-art-club-magazine-291.png)Catapult - The New Munchies Art Club MagazineDi Franco![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/thumbnail/hugo-brazao.webp)](https://www.catapult-platform.art/hugo-brazao-artist/) [Kuba Freter: Dreamers Don’t Sleep - They Skate, Slam, and Smoke Through ItKuba Freter’s latest series “Dreamers” blurs reality and fiction in raw, black-and-white images of youth, skate culture, and collective longing. A must-see feature via Munchies Art Club.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/icon/munchies-art-club-magazine-292.png)Catapult - The New Munchies Art Club MagazineDominique Catherina Foertig![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/thumbnail/kuba-freter-1.webp)](https://www.catapult-platform.art/kuba-freter-dreamers-dont-sleep-they-skate-slam-and-smoke-through-it/)