CHICAGO 2023

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Situations of Liminality and Transformation is a new exhibition by Chicago artist Sheri Rush and Canadian artist Jared Betts comprised of large-scale paintings on the threshold of abstraction and representation.

Rush and Betts were brought together through their shared reverence for the gift of nature, process-based painting, and the emotive power of color. Their synergies sparked the idea to co-create this bewitched portal to another world. They encourage the viewer to leave reality behind and immerse themselves in a colorful enchanted forest fantasy.

As symbolized in folklore, mythology, and contemporary fantasy worlds, woodlands can be places of darkness and danger or peaceful refuges of solace. After years of political turmoil and isolation, this exhibition offers an escape into a reflective, happy, and healing realm.

Explains Betts, "This series was a powerful phenomenological renewal experience. Each color is brought to the canvas with paint flowing like tidal moonpools, drips breathing life into puddles that tell secrets to brooks and lead into rivers that continue to fairy waterfalls, which flow to the ocean.

Rush recalls, "Even as a young girl, forests were my refuge, my solace, and extremely magical. Trees were not trees; they were characters on a stage, where I would look for forms that interacted and made visuals that felt like the dramas in my head."

Rush's source material is her photographic journey through nature taken during a residency in Newfoundland. She starts each painting with spray paint and acrylic, adding markers and later oil paint. Exploring the unique properties of each medium is an essential part of her technique, as is rotating the canvas to paint from two different directions. Rush builds on processes and colors that emerged in her work during the pandemic.

Betts is heavily influenced by abstract expressionism, anime, and colors from the 80s. He admits to being drawn to Madonna's leopard pattern fashion era and cyberpunk future retro aesthetic. His approach incorporates gestures and organic forms, working in layers while exploring tensions between recognizable forms and abstraction.

Situations of Liminality and Transformation is an energetic painting dialogue, as much about the tensions between abstraction and representation as it is a reflection on the restorative power of the natural world.

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When was the last time you looked at the stars? I mean really looked, because there is a significant dissimilarity between looking and seeing. Every night I stand in the moonlight beside the river in my front yard and stare awestricken at the stars. We are more connected to the stars than we think, as the caterpillar connects to the chrysalis to be reborn as a nymphalidae. We came from the stars, I am a starchild and I know one day I will return to the stars and become part of a new constellation. There is so much magic in this world, words could never do proper justice to the sensations that I have been feeling in nature at my new fantasia forest house lately. Sometimes it feels like my heart might explode. Life is a miracle, a moon gate, nature is the source and we are each given gifts to uplift each other through color, kindness and butterfly forest dreams. I want to create paintings that make people feel like they are in a portal that they can safely get lost in, if not for a little while to escape reality into a color fantasy. This series was a powerful phenomenological renewal experience; the choice of my color palette is becoming honed + refined, through the experience of being a painters painter. Each color brought to the vicinity of the canvas, paint flowing like tidal moonpools, drips that breath life to puddles, who tell secrets to brooks, into rivers that lead to fairy waterfalls, which flow to the ocean.

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Iridescent pulsing translucent neon plankton

Shimmering in turquoise ocean nebulas

Sea stars of the abyss

Delusional fantasy swamp nymphs

The oak tree with its healing powers

Firefly’s in a wildflower dream meadow set a blaze

The tide chases the man in the moon

Playing in the sunrise with sparos

Orchid ethereal starseed light prisms

Robins nest blue, baby blue, turquoise, azure, seafoam

Silk bubblegum pink cerebrum planet

The cortex vortex of artax in the swamps of sadness

Energy light beings in a sugar plum tree

Away in the sea of red

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