Amy Barker, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne

“Many artists have used the garden as a stage for human drama, a place where mystical and enchanting things happen. Sometimes gardens are depicted as safe spaces; on other occasions, danger can lurk around a corner. Rarely are they depicted as just somewhere you prune the roses or hang the washing.
Take, for example, the nostalgia section of this exhibition, titled the Enchanted Garden, where you will find Beatrix Potter’s exquisite watercolours of the garden in Wales she retreated to, accompanied by her two pet rabbits, following the death of her fiance.
In stark contrast, there’s Edward Burne-Jones’s 1870 work, Study for the Sleeping Knights – a sketch for the Briar Rose series – which features tortured male bodies twisted into the sharp thorns. It looks distinctly uncomfortable.
Of course, no one captures the sense of extraordinary events happening behind garden walls or among flower beds quite like Stanley Spencer. The gallery owns this wonderful painting and it was the starting point for this show, our first self-curated exhibition.
The picture is something of a tribute to love, as the returning dustman, a little chap like Spencer himself, is unceremoniously scooped up into the arms of his larger wife in their front garden.
They are surrounded by friends and neighbours who are offering up items from a dustbin – including a broken teapot, a cabbage leaf and an old jam jar – in a kind of worshipful way.
It was painted at the time when Spencer met Patricia Preece – a woman who went on to have a devastating effect on many aspects of his life as his second wife – so this could well be about the artist learning anew what frustrated desire was all about.
Later in life, Spencer produced a series of garden scenes at the request of his dealer, who realised that they were guaranteed money-spinners.
We also have three of those in the exhibition: they are almost forensic-style close-ups of magnolias and lilies, and a greenhouse with a giant string of onions painted in extraordinary detail.
I assume that, because he could not include a human figure in there, this was Spencer’s attempt to paint an object with a personality of its own.
It’s interesting to see people come into the gallery and behave as though they are visiting a garden, walking around the borders in search of a visually stimulating experience.
We put the show together with that in mind, so the colours bounce off each other. We have added some books in there as well, to add a different texture or two.”

The Enchanted Garden is at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, until 7 October

Amy Barker is the keeper of art at Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums