Page 123 - Genius

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The lucidity and control through which Jette van der lende paints her Soul of Flower Death (2005)) van der lende’s vision remains inviolate and
seemingly modest objects and spaces create a deeply saturating aural pure. She speaks to us in a large amphitheater about small things but in
experience for the viewer. What might this aura cling to? It is clearly a large way. And we are alone with her in this gigantic mental setting as
given over to the sensed experience of the artist. This experience trian- she starts the wheels of consciousness turning.
gulates between several aspects of creative activity of giving form and The presence of an intimate immensity saturates this artist modestly
then giving life to form. The first aspect under scrutiny are her mental, sized, yet exponentially loaded artworks. They convey a deeply felt and
ideational and ideological responses to the object or objects she depicts deeply held emotional experience. This is all the more so because of the
(their representation) as signified. Next are her sensations that are given memento-mori aspect of the work.
form through the handling of her paint along the surface of her pictorial The irrevocability and undeniability of time’s passing is foremost and center
plane, including the layering and feathering of her colored brush strokes, in the artist’s mind as she depicts her objects. In this respect van der
the compositional structure, the balancing of hues and shadows. Finally lende’s capacity to mimetically re-present the world through her chosen
one might consider the third aspect her emotional responses to her self, visual vignettes is haunting and bracing. life is Protected, for example, a
her mental condition and psychic disposition as she pictorially refers to recent oil painting that showcases the depiction of an egg as a glowing
her subjects as signifiers. This aspect of her vision takes into account the orb next to a fragment of a cracked white shell, brings everything home:
correspondences that are made as the artist begins and ends the activity the proof of internal strength is the capacity to be, to co-exist, with our
of painting. Call this the Mallarmean aspect (we are referring here to the vulnerability.
poet’s injunction to describe not the thing but the effect of the thing on
the mind). The end result of course is the object that we as viewers see Jette van der lende creates slow artworks that bespeak of great things in
in its completed form, the finished painting. intimate detail. Her artworks serve as mirrors to us, reflecting timeless
With her assertion on the ephemerally of the moment being recorded internal configurations of the self, imitating in some manner models in an
with such fidelity through her gossamer sense of light (natural light and external world, but also proudly defining the mirror as if only subservient
the light of the sun, but also the light of fire’s embers…) it is no wonder to the Idea that Oscar Wilde defines as: “it is the spectator, and not life,
that while the subjects of her work are varied: (for example, Three blocks that art really mirrors”.
(2004) The Spirit of Freedom (2005), Protection Against lies (2005), The D.F. Colman, art writer based in Manhattan, Ny
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