Vleimens ("Wetlands Wanderer")

A collection of four paintings

In painting the abstract wetland landscapes that constitute Vleimens, I purposely engaged with the dark things that hide in the deeper pools of my subconscious. Fear, anxiety, comparison. I looked them in the eely eye, and gave them permission to rot, to disintegrate. The skeletons that remained — the existential questions, identity seeking, and yearning for community — I am coming to identify as inherent to the shared experience of being human.

It has been a slow process of dissection and reduction, but one that has borne fecund ground. Like a child wading through reeds to find hidden treasures (fish, tadpoles, waterlilies!), I have been exploring my innerscape to discover anew the parts that I value. And as I do so, the fog starts to dissipate.

The titles of the works in this collection have been borrowed from Delia Owens' novel Where the Crawdads Sing (2018), given its vivid description of wetland-type landscapes, as below:

Marsh is not swamp. Marsh is a space of light, where grass grows in water, and water flows into the sky. Slow-moving creeks wander, carrying the orb of the sun with them to the sea, and long-legged birds lift with unexpected grace—as though not built to fly—against the roar of a thousand snow geese. Then within the marsh, here and there, true swamp crawls into low-lying bogs, hidden in clammy forests. Swamp water is still and dark, having swallowed the light in its muddy throat. Even night crawlers are diurnal in this lair. There are sounds, of course, but compared to the marsh, the swamp is quiet because decomposition is cellular work. Life decays and reeks and returns to the rotted duff; a poignant wallow of death begetting life.

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