Discover a curious collection of a most extraordinary kind Among these mystical dimensions, unchartered territory awaits Betsy Youngquist’s world is a sea of wonders, a forest of treasure Enlighten your senses as you expand your creative horizons Season of the Surreal is sure to be your delight.

Behold a world, betwixt the spiritual and the mundane, where magic lies within. A leading cast of characters are eager to greet you in an exhibition at Patina like never before...

Season of the Surreal features a collection of three-dimensional mixed media sculpture that hails from the hypnagogic realm of Betsy Youngquist.

Through her surrealism, Youngquist seeks to expand upon the connectivity of the elevated anthropological experience, honoring that humanity contributes to a magical interconnectedness among all living things.

“A world where we are “off” on the surface, judged perhaps, yet underneath we are pure gold”
Betsy Youngquist

A long time admirer of Santa Fe, Youngquist has been coming to the mystical desertscape since she was in her mid-twenties. Exploring beyond Santa Fe through the Anasazi site and Mesa Verde to Bandelier and Chaco Canyon, the area did more than resonate with Youngquist; Santa Fe and greater New Mexico became a strong kindred arena for her creative frontier.

“I love the layers of stories, the weaving together of the visible and invisible history, the mystic and the land itself”
Betsy Youngquist

Traveling to Santa Fe once again for Season of the Surreal, Youngquist’s sculpture plays within a fantasia of the imaginative and the peculiar. Through her creations, she continues to question our senses while always looking for a new vantage point of discovery.

Since the beginning of her artistic career, Youngquist was fascinated by anthropomorphism. Seeking to conceptualize humanity and empathy in her work, the idea was manifested in the hybridization of human and animal. She made the leap to the three-dimension and continues to use the primal juxtaposition among her mosaic sculpture menagerie.

Her exceptional command of color, pristine sense of design, and comprehension of humorous undertones stirred Allison and Ivan Barnett of Patina Gallery. Unexpectedly, they crossed paths with Youngquist’s work in New Orleans. Upon seeing her sculptures they immediately fell in love; she was meant to be at Patina and her work was meant for Santa Fe, NM.

Youngquist inhabits a space where intuition thrives. Beginning a new piece, she starts with a basic concept and lands herself somewhere personally profound. Starting with the eyes, she listens to what her character wants to become and when informed, continues on to cultivate a finished form with its own presence and personality.

She prefers to work with older, found materials, trusting that each part of her sculpture becomes enchanted with their own narrative energy. As she explains:

“We live in a world made of energy and I believe objects can absorb and retain that energy”

Amassing an assortment of vintage glass beads, stones, sections of antique beaded purses, antique porcelain dolls, prosthetic eyes and a gamut of precious gems; a creature slowly materializes, possessing its own powerful story.

While in her studio, Flow takes control. She lets herself go into her world of creation where sense of time is irrelevant, where answers become transparent and in a beautiful, wonderful way, the day keeps clicking along.

Youngquist never ceases to search for the illusive line between logic and mystic. Through her creative endeavor, she works to cultivate human truths inwards and outwards along the line of a conscious continuum.

“Creating art is a means to return to the looking glass and reenter the garden where flowers whisper and birds can talk. As my beaded characters emerge they carry with them tales from the other side of the mirror. I am grateful for the joy and astonishment experienced through this journey”
Betsy Youngquist

Season of the Surreal is a land cast of unearthly delectation, where characters are born in the chasm of underlying mystery within the world we share.

“My most important role was to destroy the line of demarcation between what seems real and what seems fantastic. Because in the world I was trying to evoke that barrier didn’t exist”
Gabriel Garcia Marquez

For more information on the work, please email: allison@patina-gallery.com

Sign up for Patina Gallery emails to be the first to hear when exhibitions are live and to see new works. Follow Patina Gallery on social media to keep up to date with the show.