Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, April 29, 2022: Bonnie Severien, a Dutch emerging artist (#1558)

Friday, April 29, 2022

Artist of the Day, April 29, 2022: Bonnie Severien, a Dutch emerging artist (#1558)

Bonnie Severien (1978) was born in Heerhugowaard and currently living and working in the Netherlands, graduated in 2007 from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague.

She was nominated five times for the Royal Prize for Painting, and her paintings have been exhibited in the Royal Palace Amsterdam and the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, among others.

Urban Nature
The Urban Nature paintings are inspired by 17th century Dutch flower still lifes and the works of Matisse with the beautiful patterns. The plants represent abundance, innocence and the organic world. Insects symbolize both life and transience. The self-designed, geometric patterns represent the man-made linear constructions and are related to De Stijl, Amsterdam School (Art Deco) and the Dutch Funnel Beaker culture.

Urban Nature Treasures
In addition to the success of the large Urban Nature paintings, there is now a new series of twelve canvases, called Urban Nature Treasures. For this series I was inspired by three movements from Dutch (art) history.

Firstly, the Drenthe Funnel Beaker Culture, in which earthenware pots with beautiful primitive patterns were made. Created by the first people to inhabit the Netherlands, some 4,000 years BC. Second, you can see the lush natural shapes of the Amsterdam School (Art Deco) and finally the geometric lines from De Stijl movement by Piet Mondrian.

These works of art are small treasures, contemporary with a link to the past.

"I want to reflect the alienating effect of our artificial environment in my work. Originality is hard to find, we get an illusion of reality. What is real and what is unreal? Distance and time seem outdated concepts because everything is quickly accessible via airplane, internet and satellite.

We hardly know the world from our own experience. In most works I use contrasting elements. I take apart (architectural) situations that I encounter in films and other media and put them together in a new way, as in a collage. By using scenes with constructions of different scales, I create a reality that is simultaneously recognizable and alienating. This is the world as I see it.

There is no such thing as one reality, neither in my works. In the most recent series of paintings ('Fragments'), the images become more abstract. Fragments intertwine to form a kaleidoscopic whole. The spatial context disappears, the idea that you are literally standing somewhere. What remains are fragments of worlds that once passed you by."

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