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Bio
Devan Horton is a Northern Kentucky artist who creates paintings that call attention to the ways in which humans have corrupted nature. Since receiving her BFA in Painting from Northern Kentucky University, Devan has crafted and promoted her artistic career by exhibiting in local and national galleries, including Manifest Gallery, Buckham Gallery, and Caza Sykes Gallery. Most recently, she held a solo exhibition of her series, "Penchant", at Studio Kroner in Cincinnati, an exhibition and fundraising event called “Trash Talk” which benefited three local sustainability organizations; Keep Cincinnati Beautiful, Green Umbrella, and the Cincinnati Recycle and Reuse Hub. In 2021 she completed a residency program through Friends of Black Rock, a conservation organization in the Black Rock Desert. In March of 2022, Devan was a featured panelist in The Clifton Cultural Arts Center's Sunset Salon: Art as Activism. Activism, collectiveness, and a love of the natural world have remained themes in Devan's work since college. Recently, she has launched a series of experiments with sustainable, non-toxic paints, pigments, and regenerative canvas materials.
Statement
Environmental activism, connectivity, and collective action have been recurring themes in my work throughout it's evolution. My older paintings explored subjects like swarming insects and invasive plant species, then in 2020, I created a body of trashed landscape oil paintings, titled “Penchant”. This series confronted our cultural disconnect to nature, our obsession with consumption, and our denial of the waste piling up around us. This work was the catalyst for me to analyze my own consumption habits and caused me to not only alter the way I consumed, but to transform my art practice as well. The way I think of and collect materials has changed, and I am now experimenting with non-toxic, botanical dyes and homemade paints, most of which are foraged locally. While working with these new mediums is incredibly rewarding in so many ways, I am still drawn to the color, texture, and even smell of oil paints. I am tied to the nostalgia of it, my confidence using it, and the pre-packaged convenience, very much like the struggle we all feel to give up habitual comforts to live more sustainably and healthfully. For this exhibition, I created “hybrid” paintings representing my conflict with paint and being a sustainable artist. I have created soft backgrounds using the botanical mediums that I have been exploring, juxtaposed with foreboding rainbows of the oil pigments that are so seemingly difficult to separate from. Through these pieces, I am able to process this shift by reminding myself of my reasons for doing so.
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