Terra D'ombra: Colette LaVette
To mark Colette LaVette’s representation with GJG, the artist presents an online exhibition of seven original works on paper.
Each piece captures LaVette's signature fusion of the natural and the ornamental, rendered with a raw immediacy that reflects her intuitive mark-making. Swirling forms, elemental motifs and flourishes of Rococo rhythm appear throughout, offering a distilled glimpse into the artist's ongoing exploration of instinct, femininity, and transformation.
Thematically, LaVette blends mythological and folkloric narratives with visceral, biological energy. Her paintings often juxtapose biomorphic abstraction with figurative imagery in compositions that evoke both Rococo elegance and primordial intensity. Biomorphic forms emerge from gestural, expressionist markings, while wind-like fabrics, petals and elemental motifs swirl through her canvases, evoking movement and transformation
Colette LaVette is a British painter and sculptor whose practice is deeply rooted in explorations of human mythos, geological and biological history, and sustainable artmaking. Born in England in 1992 and based in a rustic studio attached to a centuries‑old cottage, LaVette crafts her own oil pigments from natural minerals - ochre, lapis lazuli, iron oxides - blended with walnut and linseed oils, which she applies to linen and rag paper substrate.
