03 – The Natural Gardener – 95 x 95cm mixed media on Belgium Linen – Artist Andre van der Kerkhoff

The Natural Gardener

Size | 95 c 95 cm

Mixed Media on Belgium Linen

About The Work – Artist – Andre van der Kerkhoff

Quoting | ROBERTA SMITH
Co-chief art critic of The New York Times,
July 2017, NYC, NY‘ …………… The dragonfly and the butterfly are among the myriad of shapes that conjure up insects, turtles, lizards and snakes, flight paths and trajectories; floral-type patterns recall the woven mile-feuilles backgrounds of medieval wall hangings; circles string coiled pearls in a nebula of another universe.

There is a mystery encased in these images–a hidden tale told in still another poetic language tinted by other landscapes. Landscapes he has made uniquely his own, rendered in earth tones, a “palette [that] reflects the pigments of the Australian Continent,” he writes.

A quasi-musicality and a rhythm inhabit these latest works, a near- repetitive refrain, somewhat reminiscent of some “outsider art.” But van der Kerkhoff is no outsider. His is a reconstruction of an Australian fabric emanating from a melody within, heard by a stranger in a strange land.

He is a stranger no longer. “It would be rather strange,” he states, “to live in one of Earth’s oldest landscapes and not be interested in it and its in-explainable power and magic…………..’