PLANTS EXPLORED IN PAINTING
Updated: Jun 28, 2023
Research shows that plants communicate with one another and respond to their environments. These characteristics have been captured by artist Lauren Shantall in her exhibition ‘Plant Babies’, a series of plant portraits in acrylics that were displayed at The Yard Cape Town (Silo District in the V&A Waterfront).
Shantall says that social media abounds with botanical styling, pot plant hashtags and master classes on how to style house plants for today’s urban jungles. The trend is linked to the rise of organicism as a lifestyle philosophy: reverence for nature, heightened awareness of greening and green issues, and the need for plant therapy as an antidote to digital disconnection.
Her paintings embrace all this and she engages with the notion of portraiture, where her plants are her sitters. The paintings vary in the way they depict their leafy subjects. Some are semi-realistic, others are more abstract, yet all are linked by highly expressive use of colour.
Previously, her work has been included in group shows at RK Contemporary, Vacant Museum (global online), Jaffer Modern in Cape Town and Galeria Azur in Madrid, Spain.
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