It's never too late to create - how the pandemic has let creativity bloom
Los Angeles, California May 13, 2021 (Issuewire.com) - 'When I was at school, no-one suggested art class was a time to express creativity - we were there to follow instructions,' says Attorney Elizabeth Botsford. 'So when I started a painting class during lockdown, delving into the creative process was a revelation.'
As a divorced mom of two college-aged kids, Elizabeth Botsford had spent the past 2 decades driving her children to fun after-school activities, as well as working as an estate planning attorney at her firm Busy Wills, Inc., leaving no time or energy for creative pursuits herself. So she didn't take her new hobby very seriously.
'I thought of painting as art therapy. But the more I painted, the more drawn into the process and the possibilities I became.'
Just for fun, she submitted her work to a few art exhibitions, not expecting any great results.
'Then my teacher mentioned NFTs, which I had never heard of, so I minted a few images of my paintings on Rarible.com under the name Lockdownart2021 (rarible.com/lockdownart2021), and that required me to set up an Instagram account (instagram.com/lockdownart2021). All of a sudden, I was in business.'
NFT stands for non-fungible token. These are the artworks of the blockchain. Whereas each bitcoin is the same as the other, each NFT is unique. 'At my age, it's exciting to be on the cutting edge. Young people are portrayed as having a monopoly on access to or interest in the very latest technology. Bizarrely, the hobby I started to get away from screens, has led me back into learning about a new technology application. It is good for our brains to be constantly pushing forward.'
The artwork that will show at the London Biennale is called 'Enclosures - The Pastoral Underbelly'. The composition of the painting is based on the landscapes of Capability Brown, the most brilliant English landscape designer. When you visit old stately homes in England, the stunning grounds were often originally created by Capability Brown - one example is Blenheim Palace which features in the movie The Favorite. These landscapes appear to be natural idylls, but are underpinned by huge engineering works. The water features look as though they just happened to be in the perfect spot, but were, in fact, artificially built to provide the most beautiful view. Capability Brown placed summer houses with Greek columns at a distance from the main house, so the viewer's eye has a focal point when scanning the landscape. He used Cedar of Lebanon trees, with distinct horizontals to frame the view.
Although the results are beautiful, these pleasure gardens were built at a terrible price. They were the end result of a movement called The Enclosures. Prior to the building of these pleasure gardens for the aristocracy, the land had been used for grazing by the local populations. Common grazing rights meant the poor had somewhere to graze their one cow or few sheep. Once the land was enclosed by aristocrats, the poor became dispossessed, causing widespread misery.
In this painting, Capability Brown's landscapes have been transcribed, showing their underbelly. The vertical lines are young bamboo. The horizontals are the pink tongues of the dispossessed, stuck out in defiance. The water feature of the river with the lake is depicted as a human gut with a stomach. Overall, this painting shows the raw strength of the land, which continually attempts to rebalance itself, in order to sustain life, no matter how we treat it.
'The Enclosures were a historical turning point, just as the pandemic is in our time. How we move forward, respecting the Earth and each other, will show us just how much progress has really happened.'
For more information, please email elizabeth@busywills.com Tel: (818) 579-7900
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