Tender, Bethany Holmes, Acrylic, Oil & Oil Stick on Canvas, 90 × 122 cm, 2025
Bethany Holmes energetic and expressive paintings take inspiration from her surroundings, but the works she creates are not landscapes, but instead a layering of experience. There is no attempt to capture topographical imprint, no interest in the plein-air, instead it is the shifting light, changes in temperature, and the ways colours interact that give her inspiration. Walks through the countryside offer a means to collect different tones and shades rather than views, and these are the impetus for her abstractions, distillations of a visual essence. Bethany begins every new piece with a meditative colour mixing, a search for the right palette in a reflective excavation. This attentive exercise serves as a mindful primer towards the activity of painting – tones are recollections, and each is refined until a decisive synergy is revealed. Mixing is thinking, but painting is impulse.
Her approach is frenetic, committing paint to a given surface with rapidity and abandon, and she describes this as being loud and that it occurs with a burst. Working in close proximity to a surface, an urgent and unconscious rhythm takes over her in a vigorous visual cacophony. Brushes, which keep within the span of the hand, become decision makers as she strikes – briskly sweeping and jabbing – there is a beauty in the fight.
Works:
Tender, Bethany Holmes, Acrylic, Oil & Oil Stick on Canvas, 90 × 122 cm, 2025
Emberlight, Bethany Holmes, Acrylic, Oil, Oil Stick & Pastel on Linen, 15 x 25 cm, 2025
Exhibition: Fire, 08/01/26 - 31/01/26
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