flower still life

Daan van Doorn's large-scale botanical paintings are inspired by Dutch flower still lifes from the 17th century. In this era the town of Middelburg hosted a number of famous flower painters like Christoffel van den Berghe, Balthasar van der Ast, Johannes Goedaert and Adriaen Coorte. Teams of botanists and gardeners worked together with artists to create spectacular flower still life paintings. These became a thorough obsession in the Dutch Golden Age, together with collecting tulips. Flower bulbs of rare striped and raffled tulips were large-scale investments. What fascinates Van Doorn is the fact that the stripes and raffles are mutations, deviations. Investors who acquired bulbs had to wait and see which tulip appeared. Letting nature unfold itself, cooperating with the natural course of things: these philosophies are mirrored in the drippings of Van Doorns heavily diluted oil paint. It’s a mixture of craft and control plus an almost meditative process of release, letting go.
Flowers, unadorned. No vase, no background. Some have exquisite details, others are merely suggested. There are flower buds and wilted petals, depicted in natural pigments and soft earth tones. It’s the passing of time, captured by Daan’s charcoal drawings and translucent oil paint swirls. The temporary, timeless beauty of flowers.