Artist’s Statement

Through her paintings Betra Fraval graphically and poetically interprets the landscapes she encounters. Her graphic abstractions use visual languages of cartography and geographic strata as frameworks for understanding the hidden meanings that particular places hold. Often these places map the artist's travels and worldy surrounds. In State of Slow Shift Fraval charts the common ground between seemingly disparate environments she has encountered in the past year: the glaciers of Norway and Ben Lomond mountain, Tasmania.

In each of these landscapes, there are powerful undercurrents of knowledge and reflection. Glaciers move at an imperceptible pace, testimonies of the strength of quiet progress. For Ben Lomond, there is a breathtaking awareness of the vastness of time. Its mountainous rock formations date to the Jurassic period and what we experience of them is a mere blink in their history. It hints at the slow, but inevitable passing of time which eventually overtakes all things. Both landscapes are in constant states of slow shift - monuments of past and future.