The pretty rigorous choice to show photos only, draws the spectator into Mulders’ world of his natural surroundings and how he perceives his world running daily early in the morning through the quiet landscapes with woods and fields, wet with dew and mysteriously illuminated by the rising sun. During this walks he sees nature’s free gifts to feed himself with new images, colours, atmosphere and forms for his autonomous and applied arts which he uses between abstraction and representation to balance all without forgetting the tradition from both the Christian and secular iconography. As the article Apocalypse Always, With Marc Mulders into the Future says: “The viewer is put to work by Mulders.”
De Pont in Tilburg wrote: “Marc Mulders (1958) is a Dutch painter, water colourist, photographer and stained glass artist. He is best known for his oil paintings in which he follows the course of nature. In spring and summer Mulders paints tulips, irises and roses; in fall and winter he focuses on wildlife like pheasants and hares… The oeuvre of Marc Mulders is determined by what might be the major theme in the history of art: the eternal cycle of life and death. The expression of living and dying, death and resurrection, has been in the Western painting for a long time and Mulders places himself consciously in that tradition. In series of paintings he develops this theme and he explores the pictorial possibilities.”
At the press meeting at Piet Hein Eek’s place in Eindhoven to see the new series of works in the exposition ‘Where The Devil Don’t Stay’ -from 21/9/2014 to 1/2/2015- Mulders talked about not longer bringing flowers into his atelier as they are all around him as special sown flower fields to see the space behind the flowers. “In that process I get more and more fascinated by the infinity behind the flowers.
But that space is an abstraction, so I’m going to abstract painting. That’s really a quest.”
With his works he shows an optimistic vision. And by developing autonomous art into decorative art he gives us this feast of life. Passes on the little gifts he found in nature.
This photo book puts you at work to find that depth in Mulders’ work.
Angela van der Burght
Read more at exposition the Park Agenda> and Artists' Portrait> and expositon Where The Devil Don't Stay