The Alchemy of Spring: Plants Painted with Plants – Libby Mitchell

A spring exhibition of botanical artworks created with plant-based inks, celebrating renewal, growth, and the vibrant colours and rhythms of the natural world.

This exhibition explores the expressive possibilities of painting with handmade natural inks and watercolours – materials derived from plants, minerals, and organic matter that carry both visual and ecological narratives. Each work is created using pigments extracted through slow, experimental processes, where Libby engages directly with the environment as both source and collaborator.

At its core, the exhibition is a meditation on sustainability, impermanence, and connection to place. By using locally foraged or responsibly sourced materials, Mitchell foregrounds a slower, more attentive mode of making – one that resists industrial standardisation in favour of intimacy and care. Viewers are encouraged to consider the hidden histories of materials, and to reflect on how art can exist in closer harmony with the natural world while attempting to further answer what kind of art can provoke genuine environmental action.

Libby Mitchell is a multidisciplinary artist residing in WASPS Riverside House – Edinburgh, Scotland. Having completed an Advanced Diploma of Visual Art in Melbourne, Australia, she has since travelled New Zealand as a landscape artist, taking inspiration for her Art from the bush and her time working as a landscaper in Northland.

Sustainability is not an aesthetic choice but a guiding principle. By rejecting mass-produced materials and minimizing environmental impact, Libby challenges conventional art practices and invites a reconsideration of how art is made. Their process is intentionally slow and labor-intensive, emphasising care, patience, and a reconnection with natural cycles.

Influenced by both traditional botanical illustration, impressionism and contemporary environmental art, Libby navigates the space between documentation and emotional response. Each piece becomes a record not only of what is seen, but of what is felt: a moment of stillness, a seasonal shift, or the fragile resilience of plant life in a changing climate.