Website: Colette LaVette Instagram: @colette.lavette

At the centre of artist Colette LaVette's personal life and art practice is her passion for sustainability, as well as her relentless interest in geological/biological history and psychological cause and effect that transcends time.

Having graduated with a design degree in 2013, Colette has since travelled the world extensively, returning to her home town to establish her place within the art world, renovate historical homes and build a family. At the centre of her personal life and art practice is her passion for sustainability, as well as her relentless interest in geological/biological history and psychological cause and effect that transcends time.

Colette harnesses sustainable materials to create her work, taking form in pieces that explore our relationship to our environment, whether that be immediate or far reaching. Her work has a tendency to find order in chaos, culminating in a chaotic calm that explores environments past and present, transcending time. On a most fundamental level, Colette endeavours to create art that doesn't offer everything upon the first viewing, but continues to give something new each time the art is viewed. It is easy to miss the figures that roam the expressionist impasto marks at first, but they slowly appear over time, emerging from the paint around them as a product of their environment.

The materials Colette harnesses are of pure and natural origin, directly from the ground. Mixing these dry pigments like red earth, iron oxide, ochres and titanium dioxide with pure linseed oil form the basis of the cruelty free and sustainable paint she uses. This paint is then applied to surfaces such as linen, bamboo and hemp. Despite the fact her art could be left outside and would return to the ground leaving no trace, whilst it is hung on walls the archival qualities are incomparable. For example, the iron oxide is the same used by early modern man for cave art which remains to this day.

Colette has most recently exhibited at physical venues such as, Rugby Museum & Art Gallery, London's Southbank OXO tower Wharf and Boomer Gallery in Whitechapel and virtual events such as King House Gallery: The Year 2020. She has been featured multiple times in the Homes & Garden Art Edit. Her original works sit in collections around the world, including Hong Kong, France, Germany, Iceland and America as well as all over the UK.