bloom
paintings by Kate Bender
Bloom may seem a departure from my usual abstract paintings, but yet it is still related in my intention to express colour, form and space. In Bloom I’m expressing the fragile ephemerality of the rose, to convey both a sense of movement and joy, and also a multifaceted sensuality as revealed by the curvaceous and billowing petals.
The rose symbolises powerful emotions and desires, with all its paradoxes and ambiguities – besides its diverse beauty it can be healing yet harmful, passionate yet mournful, flourishing yet decaying. Bloom is an unashamed celebration of the feminine sensuality, the strength, and delicate beauty that a rose contains.
The quotes contained within are borrowed from Georgia O’Keeffe; they really resonate with me and I doubt I can express myself, or my intentions, better than she has.
“When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment.
I want to give that world to someone else.”
- Georgia O’Keeffe
Through challenging times, both personal and external, I increasingly relied on the beauty contained within our garden to centre myself and find some momentary joy. I am totally entranced by the beauty of a single flower, it temporarily takes me away from all my stress and worries.
“Whether the flower or the colour is the focus I do not know.
I do know the flower is painted large to convey my experience with the flower
– and what is my experience if it is not the colour?”
- Georgia O’Keeffe
Bloom a collection of solitary or paired roses on an amplified scale; with colour and light illuminating the rose across the canvas as if a ballet dancer illuminated by a spotlight while performing centre-stage. A dark atmospheric space envelopes the roses, elevating the rose to iconic status and to express the reverence with which I hold them.
“I found I could say things with colours that I couldn’t say in any other way
– things that I had no words for.”
- Georgia O’Keeffe
Colour has always generated visceral emotions in me, reactions I find endlessly fascinating and something I try to capture and pass on in my paintings. The colour palette of each painting sets the tone; sometimes it’s musical, sometimes it’s emotional, sometimes it’s a sensation or even a scent .
“I know I cannot paint a flower. I cannot paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning, but maybe in terms of paint colour I can convey to you my experience of the flower or the experience that makes the flower of significance to me at that particular time.”
- Georgia O’Keeffe
A painting is a form of wordless communication and capable of generating intense feelings in a viewer. Formand colour is the essence to evoking a reminiscence, a feeling, a sensation, a moment in time.
“Nothing is less real than realism. Details are confusing.
It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things.”
- Georgia O’Keeffe
Capturing the details of a rose is not essential to me, in fact I find the details a distraction from the sensations and emotions that colour within a form arouses. I find too many details becomes more about the painting and the image itself rather the evocation of mood and meaning. The slow, meditative process of applying soft, delicate layers of paint allows the texture of the canvas adds to the soft materiality, and the transitions of colour describe the form without unnecessary detail.