Created before 2020, Peace in Release belongs to Arianna Hogan’s early figurative work, where realism was already beginning to loosen into something more atmospheric and symbolic.
The composition centres on an intimate exchange between a woman and a white dove. Rather than presenting peace as something distant or idealised, the work treats it as something held physically and carefully — close to the body, protected for a moment, and ultimately capable of being released.
Warm earth tones in the skin sit against a cool field of blue and white, creating a quiet tension between human warmth and the open, airy space surrounding the figure. The dove is deliberately pale and simplified, allowing it to operate both as a living subject and as a symbolic motif of peace, freedom and surrender.
The painting also shows an early interest in the contrast between observed form and unfinished surface. Areas of the face and hands are more closely modelled, while the clothing and background are handled with broader, broken brushwork, visible canvas and passages that remain comparatively unresolved.
Seen retrospectively, Peace in Release sits at an early point in the development of Hogan’s interest in figurative narrative: using the body, gesture, animal symbolism and atmosphere to suggest an emotional story without prescribing a single interpretation.