Artist Statement

In this exhibition, I used digital drawings and paintings depicting an orchid, to study myself as an artist, the plant, and how we interrelate.  I have always been interested in botanicals, but I recognize that they are a typical thing to paint.  So, to start my work, I purchased an orchid, a plant I find fascinating, and kept it in my studio for inspiration and to live with me throughout the semester.  As I spent time with it, I saw it more as a living breathing thing, like me.  I looked for beauty and value in the parts of the plant that don’t get much attention and used my new perspective for my work.  I related to the orchid and hope to relate to others by depicting every piece of the plant as a thing of beauty, just as we hope to be appreciated more wholly and not just for our “blooms”.  As I found more of myself in the plant, I incorporated the human body and experimented with how it and my plant drawings worked next to each other.  I bounced between digital and analog pieces to represent the push and pull between the digital and physical world that we are constantly in.  Plants are quite literally rooted in the physical world and humans are drifting more into the digital with social media and the online persona.  I then combined all of these individual pieces to build one being on the wall.  This monster I created represents myself, as a collage of fragments, forming my whole self as a human interconnected with the plant world, and I hope that other artists and audience members can see themselves in it too.

Sadie Applegate

About the Artist

Sadie Applegate is a Delaware-based artist and Studio Art and Digital Media Communications double major at Loyola University MD.  She primarily works with paint and digital tools like Procreate and Photoshop.  From a young age, art has always been her main passion.  Growing up around plants in her grandmother’s flower shop broadened her sense of what art is, and she continues to use this experience of learning how to take care of the plants and how special they are as an inspiration for her work today.  Recently she has been working on ways to combine the digital and physical world as plants are so deeply connected to the physical and humans have been drifting more into the digital.  Studying the relationship and the similarities between these two living beings brings the act of metamorphosis and transplanting into focus.