Photo by Abby Greenawalt
Bio
Christina Batipps’ work explores the impact of the climate crisis on the life cycles of certain plant and animal species as well as the impact of these changes on our routines year after year. She uses her paintbrush to talk about climate change on a broad level with a focus on the value, habits, functions, and beauty of specific species.
Christina's work is largely representational, but she usually incorporates elements of abstraction. She creates drawings, paintings, and mixed media pieces. When developing paintings, she tends to create on a larger scale with a wide range of loose motions. Her drawings and mixed media works are smaller, controlled, and more precise.
Residing in the Washington, DC area, Christina has exhibited her work throughout the United States, at the US Embassy in Costa Rica, and at the Camac Centre D’art in France. She was a 2018 Artist-in-Residence at Azule in North Carolina and Arts, Letters & Numbers in upstate New York. Christina holds an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Artist Statement
Christina Batipps' work calls attention to the urgency of the climate crisis through its reflective impact on our earth's ecosystems. Through painting, mixed media, and drawing, she explores both figuration and abstraction to shed a gentle, steady light on the impacts of climate change on plants, animals, and human behavior.
In her painting series Layered Cycles, plant life captured at scale speaks to the ephemerality of nature-how its skeleton is imprinted in Mother Earth and at the same time erodes with rapid climate change. All-encompassing, these plant and floral pieces invite the viewer with soft and vibrant pastels, only to immerse them in abstracted digging. Batipps takes inspiration from form and design gestures reminiscent of Art Nouveau while employing intuitive strokes that are entirely her own.
Her mixed media and drawing series, Food Ways, leans toward figuration and anthropological documentation of the preparation and enjoyment of food. Assembling plastic over acrylic paint on paper that has been diluted, she creates intimate scenes of characters engaging in food culture. In relation to climate change, the work raises questions about food production and processes, and about how our survival and consumption culture can exacerbate the ecological crisis.
Batipps begins every piece with a skeleton of fluid, wiggly lines drawn in liquified acrylic, intuitive marks that remain visible throughout. She layers paint over portions of this foundation, leaving raw paper or canvas open and untouched. The interplay creates transparency and negative space. Her palette ranges from bright and vibrant to soft pastels to very pale.
Batipps ultimately seeks to highlight this urgency through empathy and exposure. Her work reflects reverence for the delicate balance between human behavior and the temporality of nature.