Artist Statement

 

Hollie Betts uses predominantly oil painting to explore our constructed need for house plants, whilst reconsidering an anthropoid perspective on our relationship with nature. Her practice is entangled within the theory of plant blindness, where reflection of our connection to the planet’s fragile ecosystems is crucial in the current climate of environmental change. Her work interrogates the representation of plants in human living spaces through a partial, fluid and intriguing application of paint, and questions if this idea of nature is the one we need to be protecting. This is pronounced using the boundaries of where vibrant colours intimately meet and earthy tones surface, focussing on the diffusion of paint between the plants and the spaces they reside. She uses her work as a proposal to fabricate a space through extensive layering and figuration to open narratives about both painting and plants. Her practice traverses our position of power over the natural world, using colour to question the integrity of house plants in design trends and how they change our connection to nature in the digital age. The exposure of plants that she uses her practice to contribute towards is a response to the accumulative change needed in contemporary art to further interconnect humans and the natural world.