Witte lelies/herfst II

Description

The white lilies can be clearly recognized in this painting by the Dutch artist Marc Mulders. Virtually the whole canvas is filled with them and only the corners and edges are left empty. Mulders painted all the flowers in the same way: open lilies seen from above, in the form of a star. He used predominantly white and a pale yellow, but here and there some darker shades add depth to the work. The brightest colour was used for the brushstrokes representing the stamens. The lilies are composed petal by petal with rough paste-like brushstrokes following the direction of the petal. The middle of the painting has most layers of paint; the corners are less thickly painted.

Mulders repeatedly used the theme of the lily in his paintings. He saw a correspondence between the white lily and depictions of the body of Christ painted by the Old Masters. He associated the orangey red stamens with the stigmata on the body of the crucified Christ. The lily was the symbol of innocence and purity. In Christian symbolism flowers with the calyx open are a reference to receiving God’s gifts, but also to the transience of earthly existence. Mulders wanted to continue the tradition of painting “great” themes. Beauty and transience, vulnerability, suffering and dying have a central place in his work, as did the notion of the cyclical interconnection of life and death: the cycle in which dead material forms the basis of new life.

According to Mulders, a painting should move and edify the viewer: “My story is about suffering and the fact that this is universal and eternal. Therefore there is always an aspect of suffering in all my works.” This suffering object can be a flower or a bunch of flowers, dead game or in his older work, an explicitly religious theme. The thick paint and the rough brushstrokes in every direction show that for Mulders the act of painting was important. He created his paintings in one attempt, layer upon layer, wet paint on wet paint until he was pleased with the result. He started on the basis of a motif which he has in front of him. In addition to the symbolic associations he had with this motif, the light which fell on it was also important for him. The final image is the result of an interaction between the motif and the material, the visual factors and the act of painting.

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