Kate Bickmore

Lives and works in Rockland, ME + London, UK

Artist statement

Practice My immersive, hyperrealistic paintings of large-scale flowers, or florascapes, investigate how we come to sense aliveness. I pay close attention to plants’ physicality, their relationships, and the ways they respond to light, atmosphere, and their environments. Flowers interest me because their physical lives coexist with the meanings we associate with them: they are responsive organisms with an extraordinary variety of bodily traits, as well as cultural forms tied to femininity, sexuality, spirituality, and desire. My surroundings, research, and experiences shape how I understand these relationships, while my perspective as a highly sensitive queer woman shapes the intimacy, sensuality, and attention I bring to the work. I'm interested in transforming limited perceptions of flowers — which are often reduced to decorative or passive objects — by reimagining Victorian floral painting and portraying plants as living, responsive presences. My larger-than-life flowers push against the confines of the canvas, grow up from beneath its permeable surface, and extend beyond its frame. The plants appear both to recede into a vast, otherworldly place and to emerge into our physical realm. Painting's combination of illusionistic depth and material presence allows these spaces to feel as though they exist both somewhere beyond the canvas and physically before the viewer. Fieldwork + Research Art-making is my form of gardening — a way to experience awe, slow down, and tend to...

Artwork