In Natural Form, artists Allison James, Bethany Mabee, and Morgan Walker use abstraction to explore organic shapes and patterns found in nature. While they share a common abstract visual language, each artist brings their own unique point of view to the theme. They take familiar elements from the environment and soften or break them down through color and movement, creating a balance between things we recognize and things that feel more mysterious. Ultimately, the work is a mix of controlled technique and intuition, inviting the viewer to stop and think about growth, change, and how we connect emotionally to the world around us.

Allison James is a contemporary abstract painter inspired by the messy, thrilling terrain of human

experience and motherhood. She transforms heightened emotions and unresolved feelings into layered works defined by saturated color, subtle detail, and signature silhouettes she calls her “decoder ring things,” inviting personal interpretation. Her process is both cathartic and reflective—distilling heavier themes into compositions that feel unexpectedly light in their final form. For James, the body of work included in Natural Form is a meditation on the emotional terrain of motherhood. Familiar floral imagery is abstracted into forms that verge on unrecognizable, reflecting the ways identity shifts and reshapes. Delicate lines meet expressive, block-like forms to suggest the rhythm of a full day, while nuanced color

choices and layered motifs allow space for interpretation as these relationships evolve.

Bethany Mabee is an abstract painter and textile designer who has spent over 20 years immersed in the

interior design industry while simultaneously cultivating her painting and studio practice. Each step in Bethany’s process refuels a future process, becoming a symbol of continuous and cyclical expansion. Her work serves as a moving meditation that explores improvisation through interactions with color and material. Completed paintings take on new life through the methodical process of pattern creation for fabric and wallpaper. This pattern creation becomes an extended exploration of contrast by transforming painting improvisation into intentional digital design. Mabee states, “As someone who learns through experimentation, I love to mirror this in the studio by starting each piece without a plan beyond palette. I apply fluid layers of paint and allow color and water to interact naturally. These experiments become

compositional blueprints for secondary structural layers that explore the relationship between structure

and flow.”

Contemporary artist Morgan Walker's work reflects a deeply personal relationship with control, rooted in

her observations of life’s unpredictable nature. This exploration began while witnessing her late father’s

frustrations with the loss of control over his penmanship due to Parkinson’s disease, juxtaposed with her then young daughter’s blissful lack of awareness of control while coloring all over the page. Over time, this theme expanded to encompass Walker’s own struggles with mental health and the broader realization that we truly control very little. Her wet-on-wet technique mirrors this tension by allowing the paint to move freely while the use of tools guides the medium. With this method of working with paint she is able to shape her subject matter with intention, but never full control.

Q: Your work is consistently abstract, but shape, color, and composition seem to connect to an experience of the visual world. Where do you find inspiration? How do you translate what you see into a painting?

Allison: The longer I paint, the more I realize how deeply affected I am by the present moment. Right now, I’m very drawn to incorporating loose, wilted floral motifs into my work, as I view them as a perfect symbol of motherhood. I’ve always enjoyed taking things to the brink of complete distortion, warping and breaking apart what I experience in my world and only letting you see bits and pieces of that on the canvas. It keeps things interesting for the viewer and allows me to feel like I’m sharing part of my life through my work in a demure way.

Q: You describe your practice as 'cyclical expansion,' moving between painting and textile design. Does one typically inform the other, or do you begin with a specific pattern in mind while painting?

Bethany:  My studio practice moves from works on paper, to works on canvas, to collage and finally to pattern design.  I never begin my paintings with a pattern in mind.  Instead I paint without consideration of my textile designs.   When I’m craving a more methodical practice, I pluck out areas of a completed painting to play with potential patterns.  Although, the more I do this cyclical rhythm, the more my patterns inform my paintings.  They’ve become far more geometric!   

Q:  You describe your painting process to be set with intention but not control. Can you explain how you find this balance when you're working?

Morgan: With both methods, one can never have full control. Being aware of this and submitting to it has allowed me to be more successful in what I create. When making the ebru pieces, I love watching the forms and lines begin to shift as one. They stay connected but start to move together and become something new, a shape or design I didn’t fully plan. I always find myself looking at the background much more than the flower once I’m finished.

The canvas pieces are different. They’re a one-shot process. If something goes wrong, it goes to the side for a later project. The background color isn’t mixed beforehand, I’m building it directly on the canvas, which keeps that question alive: is this going to work? Then the flowers have a slight bleed, and I’ve learned how fast or how slowly I need to move to get the effect I want, but I still never know exactly how much they’ll bleed. That unknown is the part I love the most.

Q: Color plays an important role in your work. How do you form a color palette for a painting? Is there a plan or does the color come together more spontaneously?

Allison: It’s completely spontaneous until it’s not. I tend to get locked in on certain palettes for months at a time, sometimes years. I’m definitely working on mixing things up. But when a color combination works really well, that’s when I lock in and make multiple works within that color scheme. Color tends to flow in seasons for me. However, the length of that season is always up in the air.

Q:  Could you walk us through your creative process? Is there a particular tool or brush that has become essential to your practice?

Bethany: My practice always starts with a palette.  I love creating color containers to work within.  I typically pull interior images that I’m drawn to and tape them to the wall for reference when mixing colors.  From there, I paint several loose strips of canvas in the mixed colors.  These provide materials that I can later cut and play with to mock up a painting’s composition.   

Works on paper act as my warm up exercise, allowing me to interact with paint and water without a plan. My favorite tool for this is a ceramic rib that I use to move and pull the paint after it’s applied.

This water and paint method is the same approach that I take to a blank canvas, acting as its base layer before applying the solid shapes. My large t-square ruler and painters tape (I use more than I’d like to admit!) are definitely my greatest companions once I switch into this mode. 

The canvas strips that I guided the painting's composition earlier in the process, later become components that I can cut down further for collage work.   

Q: Do you have a favorite piece or a piece that you feel is most successful or meaningful to you in the exhibition?

Morgan: I’m especially drawn to the three monotone canvas pieces, both as a set and individually. They’re meant to represent the self in its many variations. We move through seasons, through light and darkness, but at the end of it, we are always still ourselves.