What happens when painting follows the temporal rhythms of cultivation?

Painting is organised around cultivated plants that return across long-term bodies of work. Each painting records a different encounter, allowing every return to become part of an ongoing enquiry.

Cultivation provides the temporal structure of the practice. Repeated return, gradual change and continuity become the conditions from which each painting develops. No painting begins independently. Every work inherits something from those that came before it.

The research began with Cleidi Hearn's experience of cultivation in northeastern Brazil, where these plants formed part of everyday life. Although this is its point of departure, the enquiry is not limited to a particular geography. The first body of work, Botanica Brasilis, centres on cultivated plants whose histories extend far beyond their place of origin.

Many cultivated plants have travelled across continents over centuries, carrying histories of cultivation, labour and exchange. These histories remain inseparable from the plants themselves without defining the questions the paintings pursue.

Each scroll is painted on linen, one of painting's oldest supports. The material remains visible throughout the work, allowing the surface to develop gradually as translucent layers of pigment settle into the fibres. Image and support accumulate together over time.

The paintings return repeatedly to the same cultivated plants because each encounter opens another possibility for painting. No single image concludes the enquiry.

Cleidi Hearn, a Brazilian-born artist living and working in Ireland.