Spring 2026, Tilting At Windmills

I’ve been invited by Tom Ranahan to take part in Tilting at Windmills, a spring exhibition at the Courtyard Gallery, The Core Theatre, Solihull.

The show runs from 8 April to 25 April 2026, with a Private View on 9 April, 5pm to 8pm.

It brings together thirteen artists responding to Cervantes’ Don Quixote de la Mancha. The artists involved are:

Sharon Baker

Joss Burke, France

Robert Chard

Graham Chorlton

Frank Edmunds

Peter Grego

Helen Grundy

Paul Newman

Tom Ranahan

Stephen Earl Rogers

Alastair Scruton

Lee Williams, USA

…and myself - Emma Woolley

It’s a strong group. I genuinely admire many of these artists, so it feels good to be asked.

The premise is simple. A contemporary response to Don Quixote. But the novel itself is anything but simple.

What interests me is not the costume or the theatre of it. It’s the psychological tension. The collision between belief and reality. The way Quixote returns to the same battle again and again, convinced, certain, unwavering. There’s something unsettling about that repetition. Once more. And once more. And once more.

That idea of being caught in a loop.

Rather than producing something that sits outside my practice, I want this work to belong to it. My paintings carry emotional weight. They sit in the face. In the pause before impact. In the moment where conviction fractures.

So this piece needs to hold that same tension.

I’ve already begun.

There are supporting studies pinned up in the studio. Drawings that test the psychological temperature of the image. Compositional experiments that push the head, the tilt, the instability. The final work will be oil on linen, but at the moment I’m still inside the questioning stage.

I don’t want to illustrate the novel.

I want to inhabit it.

This feels less like a side project and more like an extension of something larger that’s already unfolding in the studio.

Official Website: tiltingatwindmills.co.uk
Instagram: @tilt.ingatwindmills

More soon.