Liedeke Bulder

My work is, of course, influenced by my Dutch heritage: Sunday afternoon family visits to the Rijksmuseum, flower fields and gardens. My first job as an 11 year old in a Dutch nursery started my passion for gardening. The Dutch have a saying: "Zeg het met bloemen" which translates into "Say it with flowers" and nature and flowers have always informed my imagery. My long fascination with orchids inspired my most current body of works on paper. Orchids display such diverse human characteristics; they are simultaneously fragile, strong, elegant, excotic, and bold. I love to play on the "moth" aspect of the orchid, working its transparent and wing-like characteristics by using pastel over a background wash of bistre pigment, then introducing white gouache or watercolor and finishing touches of colored pencil.

In my native country I learned about bistre, a pigment made from soot; its different colors determined by the source of the soot. The use of bistre, as both a drawing and painting medium, dates back to the European Old Masters of the 15th - 18th centuries.  

 In my art I am interested in capturing the essence and energy of a place or a growing thing. My wish is to make the viewer stop and pay attention and experience beauty as a moment of respite. My flower images are not meant to be objects of exact botanical illustration or sentimental beauty bordering on kitsch, but metaphors for human life. In the bulb and roots, all the flower’s energy is stored to bring forth new life. For me these images are symbols of our connections, our human process, our endurance and growth through darkness into light and new life, our grounded-ness in earth and our never ending search for higher manifestation.

Liedeke Bulder

Kauai 2009