About Bethany.
Bethany Mabee is a Midwest-based abstract artist and pattern designer who explores symbolism through process, color and pattern. Her practice moves in cyclical rhythms where each work feeds the next. Beginning with works on paper and expanding into layered, large-scale canvases. Materials used throughout her painting practice become components for collage work, while sections of finished paintings transform into patterns for fabric and wallpaper.
Process.
Artwork
Growing up in the Midwest where the seasons shift dramatically from winter to spring, summer and fall, I developed a strong appreciation for nature’s cycles. Each season brings its own palette + structure. These rhythms inspire and guide my creative process today.
My studio practice explores the repeating patterns that connect nature and the self; observations that have been deeply healing in my own life. By observing these patterns and letting them guide my process, I’m able to translate my own experiences into our shared relationship with nature and each other.
As someone who learns through experimentation, I love to mirror this in the studio by starting each piece without a plan beyond palette. I apply instinctive fluid layers where color and water naturally interact. These experiments become compositional blueprints for secondary structural layers, exploring the relationship between structure + flow.
Using structure to stabilize/form the insightful energy of spontaneity is a cyclical rhythm that I continually explore in my personal life and one that I enjoy experiencing tangibly in the studio!
Textiles
I have spent more than twenty years in the interior design industry as a furniture procurement consultant, all while nurturing my painting and studio practice. Finding balance between my professional life and my creative work has become a rich space for exploring lessons in order vs. flow. These experiences combined with a love of color and pattern, inspired me to develop a textile line.
By digitally extracting sections of my large-scale paintings to create patterns for fabric and wallpaper, my artwork is able to shift from personal expression to the more universal expression of design. Pattern creation allows me to continue my exploration of existing forms creating new forms. A way to mirror nature’s endless cycles of growth!