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Upcoming: Two Person exhibition at Kenise Barnes Fine Art opens May 18

Silken Spirit, 40 x 50 inches Chimera cs2, 20 x 16 inches

SHIMMER, a solo exhibition at Addison/Ripley Fine Art, Washington, DC  on view until October 14

With a full range of shimmering spectral colors this exhibition uses trees found in botanical gardens, city sidewalks, friends backyards, and nature preserves.  From the largest 72 by 40 inch to the smallest, sixteen by twenty inch painting, I’ve interpreted Dogwood, Magnolia, Bamboo, Ginkgo, Cherry Blossoms, Mountain Laurel, Paper Birch, Foxglove, and even a Redneck Rhody.  

I hope you’ll stop by and enjoy my garden.


Review by Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post, September 29, 2023
“Battenfield focuses tightly on branches of flowering and leafing trees, which she renders in just two colors of ink-like acrylic pigment. Vivid but spare, the pictures at Addison/Ripley Fine Art all have white backgrounds, so they resemble traditional East Asian paintings on paper. Actually, the artist daubs on clear Mylar, which is not absorbent. So the paint pools and glows, giving the illusion that it’s still wet.

Battenfield begins with her own photographs, whose forms she reproduces accurately. Yet there’s an intriguing element of chance to her process: She paints with the two colors mixed, then watches them separate as they dry. That explains the fluid transitions of the shifting hues, which may disengage altogether or remain partly melded. The technique is a ready-made metaphor for the workings of nature, which produces individual organisms that are nonetheless essentially connected.”

Addison/Ripley Fine Art is located at 1670 Wisconsin Avenue NW, Washington, DC 2007
Gallery Hours are Tuesday-Friday 11am – 4pm, and by appointment
(202) 338-5180
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INTIMATE MEDITATIONS ON LANDSCAPE WHILE LOOKING UP


My fascination with branches and leaves originated from a week I spent at a rural meditation retreat in the 90’s. Spring was slowly awakening the landscape from its winter bareness. For hours each day I sat next to a window, in silence. As my city mindset quieted, I was transfixed as tender buds and leaves daily transformed a gnarly elm tree outside. My paintings evoke the immediacy of that experience. My hand slowly reanimates the twisting and branching line of a tree limb, the subtle curve of a bamboo stalk, or the concentric marks radiating out from a single stone dropped into still water.


Nearly Eventide, 40 x 60 inches Evening Haze cs1, 16 x 20 inches
Two Blue, 40 x 72 inches

Check out my book:

The Artist’s Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love

“345 pages of pure career coaching gold”