The Open Palette

 Pets, Pots, Plants

Centre for Creative Arts November, 2022 Grande Prairie, Alberta.

A series of paintings that depict house plants in pots decorated with pet collars. Each name tag has a unique name that describes the function of the plant and the benefits it is known to have on an environment.

The initial prompt for the series was to research beneficial plants for the home as a tool of healing.

There is a notion that the Millennial generation is the generation that can afford the least. I have heard about how Millennials cannot afford children so they get pets. And when they can’t afford pets, they get plants. In this series, I created plants depicted as pets that never need water.

This reflects a cultural and generational shift in priorities of economic resources. These plants are substitutions in parts of life that were once traditional and common place, but now unreachable for most and even no longer desirable.