Rough Out
BOZEMAN | 10.20.2025 - 11.21.2025 |
Artists: Daphne Sweet
Daphne Sweet, a dynamic contemporary artist based in Montana, presents an arresting collection that transports the viewer into a world where myth and landscape are inextricably linked. Drawing from a profound, matriarchal upbringing and a deep engagement with the narratives of the American West, Sweet's practice spans painting and ceramics, yet remains unified by a distinctive, imaginative visual language. Sweet reclaims and reanimates historical artistic tropes—from the celestial figures of High Renaissance frescoes to the luscious movement of the Rococo—and recontextualizes them through a bold, feminist lens. Her compositions possess a complexity reminiscent of illuminated manuscripts, balancing intricate illustrative line work with a modern immediacy and a vivid, symbolic use of color. This juxtaposition breathes a playful, often electric energy into ancient forms. The works in Rough Out explore the body as a landscape and the vessel as a storyteller, merging the personal with the archetypal. Monumental figures, often embodying themes of feminine power and self-discovery, are set against vast, color-saturated terrains. Through a captivating visual dialogue of repeating motifs and allegorical symbols, Sweet blurs the boundaries between past and present, challenging inherited ways of seeing and instead asserting an expansive, resilient vision of identity. The result is a layered, mythic terrain where the intimate narrative meets the eternal drama of the cosmos. Sweet invites the viewer to enter this liminal space, where memory, legend, and the raw energy of the land converge.