Vian Borchert: “Flora and Fawna”
Lichtundfire gallery – Until Aug 26, 2022 New-York (US)
Vian Borchert’s landscape paintings evoke the idea of romance while remaining engaging and contemporary. As an expressionist artist, Borchert describes her artwork as a form of visual poetry. Borchert’s art presents imagined landscapes of romantic fields while the nature depicted emerges to tell stories of far away lands.
Maria Rilke
To begin, artist Vian Borchert recalls the late writer and poet, Rainer Maria Rilke’s words in his work, “Letters to a Young Poet” about the importance of nature and looking inward where Rilke states, “then come closer to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose.”
For the “Flora and Fawna” exhibition, Borchert’s paintings illustrate imaginative floral landscapes that hint on mysticism, literature and love for nature. The works created are done from imagination. They are imagined landscapes that insinuate romance and forgotten tales.
Suggestive and engaging.
When Borchert set upon creating these floral landscape paintings, the artist figured that she had put a tall order upon herself. Borchert wanted the paintings to look pensive, whimsical, romantic, subdued, deep and full of grandeur while remaining contemporary, suggestive and engaging. Borchert wanted the works to be awe striking while being silently powerful. Vian wanted them to not only be pretty paintings of a floral theme but to be much more… She wanted them to become their own entity.
The works created are done from imagination. They are imagined landscapes where Borchert had to dig deep into every brain cell to imagine a romantic field filled with flowers, romance and mysticism.
Floral art.
Gardening is one of Borchert’s favorite escapes, and daily observation of the blooming flowers is somewhat of an obsession for the artist. Nevertheless, making floral art is something Vian rarely gravitates to. The artist took this thematic project as a challenge to allow herself to dig deep into her own garden of creation to find fields of flora and hidden prairies along with withering flowers in seek of a second Spring – all wanting and yearning to spring out of her to bloom into the canvas and foretell their own stories that hint on romantic feelings while darkness and light step into the spotlight and become players in the color fields.
Flora and Fawna.
In the “Flora and Fawna” theme, Borchert realized this would be quite the challenge. Green is one of her least favorite colors and she seldom met a flower in art history that she has liked. Hence, in a challenging task, Borchert had to reinvent the wheel of flora in the arts.
For this thematic art exhibit, the artist wanted nature to speak up with volume and tell stories of far away lands where lovers caressed each other in the highlands and where flowers danced in the gentle breeze.
For this theme, the artist recollected from her memory inspirations from the English literature classics that were part of the artist’s formal education.
Abstractions.
The works represent abstractions collected from bits and pieces of leftover memories of classical literature that Borchert read as a child. Some of her favorite literary novels from “Wuthering Heights” to “The Secret Garden” make an entrance in these works and hint on snippets of a love story gone wrong, and a garden forgotten in time to be found again by a wandering child.
Emily Brontë.
In the paintings Borchert returns to her childhood to revisit these tales. “Wuthering Heights” is a novel by one of the artist’s favorite authors, Emily Brontë, written in 1847. Thourough the art’s creation, Borchert delved into her imagination as a child remembering how she imagined each chapter and the setting of the story in the West Yorkshire moors. The deep cool green of the Yorkshire moors always struck a nerve in the artist’s imagination even as a child. Borchert dreamt of the main characters, Heathcliff and Cathy, running into the fields to embrace secretly away from the forbadding family. The wild, stormy countryside becomes a huge part of Heathcliff’s wild love towards his soul mate Cathy who dies at a young age leaving a haunting ghostly feeling to take over the remainder of the novel. The isolation of the rural setting heightens along with the dramatic spiritual force that covers the fields. Thus, much like one of Borchert’s all times favorite singers, Kate Bush, in her musical ode to the novel – the singer captures through the lyrics of her song “Whuthering Heights” the essence of the “Highland Moor” Painting.
“Whuthering Heights”.
These lines of the song play on the sense of drama that the “Highland Moor” painting alludes.
“Out on the wiley, windy moors
We’d roll and fall in green
You had a temper like my jealousy
Too hot, too greedy
How could you leave me
When I needed to possess you?
I hated you, I loved you, too
Bad dreams in the night
They told me I was going to lose the fight
Leave behind my Wuthering, Wuthering
Wuthering Heights”
Kate Bush.
Side Note about the renowned British singer-songwriter Kate Bush who rose to fame in the 1980’s where now the singer sees a revamp of her career through her song “Running Up That Hill” which is famously used over and over again in the current celebrated show “Stranger Things” 4th season on Netflix. The show happens to also be one of Vian Borchert’s favorite shows where the artist thoroughly enjoys watching due to its sci-fi genre and mysterious storyline.
* Vian Borchert who is also an award winning poet, have written a short poem to accompany each title of the five floral landscapes.
Lichtundfire→ 175 Rivington Street, New York City, New York 10002
Vian Borchert→ https://www.vianborchert.com/exhibitions/393-flora-and-fawna-luf-2022.html
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