Botanica Brasilis is an ongoing, long-term painting series by Cleidi Hearn.
The series investigates what happens when painting follows the temporal rhythms of cultivation. Returning repeatedly to the same cultivated plants allows each painting to begin from the conditions established by the last, so the work develops as a continuous enquiry rather than a sequence of separate images.
The paintings are made on suspended linen woven from flax using successive translucent layers of pigment. The linen remains visible throughout, allowing image and support to accumulate together over time.
The cultivated plants that appear in the series are remembered from rural northeastern Brazil, where the research began. Their histories of cultivation, movement and exchange remain part of the conditions from which the work emerges, without determining the questions the paintings pursue.
No painting concludes the enquiry. Each return opens another possibility for painting.
