Evi Vingerling with Marc Mulders, Maaike Schoorel, and Ronald Zuurmond
Verwey Museum Haarlem, Haarlem, NL
8 July, 2023 – 8 January, 2024

Of all the series of paintings created by Haarlem painter Kees Verwey (1900-1995), his flower still lifes are by far the most extensive. He painted over 300 oil paintings with flowers as his starting point.

BLOEM presents several of Verwey’s floral still lifes alongside those of renowned contemporary painters, for whom flowers or plants are also a recurring theme. However, the way they approach these works, their motivations for doing so, and the meaning they hold differ significantly from Verwey’s. These differences can be found, for example, in the material aspects—from very light, scraped-off, almost nothing, to very impasto and bold—, in the content—the underlying intentions of the work—, or in the formal aspects—the degree of abstraction.

The studio of Marc Mulders (Tilburg, 1958) is surrounded by flower fields, and flowers literally form his immediate living and working environment. He paints canvases with seemingly endless fields or landscapes filled with peonies, parrot tulips, irises, or lilies. Mulders’ work is related to that of Verwey in the material, the impasto of his oil canvases. They also share a love and skill for watercolor painting.

Ronald Zuurmond (The Hague, 1964) uses painting of a houseplant or a cherry blossom branch to recover from the suffering of the world. Besides nature, he also paints, using newspaper photographs, major themes such as life and death. Unlike Verwey, he is so deeply imbued with and preoccupied with the world’s suffering that he needs these works to recover from it.

The work of Maaike Schoorel (Santpoort, 1973) demands a calm and attentive look. Only after a while do the delicate canvases, which initially appear almost empty, reveal a world of color and form. Her approach is perhaps the furthest removed from Verwey’s natural inclinations. His persona and work are more likely to be characterized as loud and present. Nevertheless, like Verwey, Schoorel clearly fits into a painterly tradition, even though her work is unmistakably contemporary.

Sometimes Evi Vingerling (Gouda, 1979) feels like she’s not living up to her full potential; after all, not everything always works out, and you occasionally disappoint yourself. But when she sees a yellow-purple morning sky or something like sunlight on a cup, she can be overcome by a sense of completeness. “That beauty allows you to feel connected to the bigger picture; it heals and puts daily problems into perspective.” Aside from the aesthetic pleasures the work evokes, Vingerling believes this is where its relevance lies.