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BETSILL, Isabel
Paintings
Artist Statement
At its core, this body of work is about friendship, and the community that can be found in queer and female friendships. I am at a stage in my life where there is a lot of societal pressure to find romantic relationships and there is a rhetoric that romantic relationships are the only place where you can find emotional intimacy. Something I've noticed however, particularly as a queer individual, is that the lines between romantic and platonic are not so black and white. There is so much intimacy to be found in friendships. I feel this to be particularly true in queer and female friendships.
For me, the word intimacy is about closeness. I think about the closeness and familiarity of a friend's supportive, nurturing touch. Those moments you share of telepathically communicating across a room, laughing together, the ways your friends can be there for you in your hardest moments.
This series is a celebration of those moments and the community found in these friendships.
Artist Bio
Isabel Betsill is a multimedia artist and art teacher from Fort Collins, Colorado, living and working in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Isabel received her Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art from Lewis and Clark College in 2020, with concentrations in drawing and sculpture. Isabel also pursued a concentration in Anthropology and Sociology and spent four months living in Yogyakarta, Indonesia researching socio-political criticism in contemporary Indonesian art. Isabel is able to draw many lines between her art and sociology. Her recent bodies of work have been concerned with social rules surrounding friendship and intimacy, particularly for women. Other themes in Isabel’s work include public versus private, femininity, and comfort.
