Oil on linen

70cm x 60cm

2025

(@colette.lavette)

25% of all sales will be donated to The Children’s Society

LaVette uses handmade oil paints, ground from natural pigments like iron oxides and ochres and bound in linseed oil, applied to linen and rag paper. Working from her old stone studio in the English countryside, LaVette engages with the language of rewilding, naturalism, and primitivism. In Bindweed, her expressionist, rococo-inflected brushwork conjures intricate, mythic worlds where biomorphic forms and rhythmic ornamentation echo the tensions between nature and control, beauty and inconvenience, innocence and judgement.

The collection invites reflection on the moral vocabulary we assign to the natural world — and by extension, to ourselves. In the garden, children may ask: “Is that a flower or a weed?” The answer depends not on the plant’s essence, but its placement, its purpose — or lack thereof. Like weeds, those who do not conform to expectations are often seen as needing removal.

Bindweed encourages us to question: who decides what belongs? What is beautiful, and what is burdensome? What systems do we uphold when we pull out the roots of what we deem “other”?