In the Garden Collage

Dutch based painter Anke Roder studied at the Academy of Arts in Maastricht and the Royal Academy of Art and Design, ’s- Hertogenbosch. She is represented in The Netherlands by galleries in Maastricht, Harlingen and in the UK. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections. Roder lives and works on the coastal plains, near Groningen, in northern Holland, where the landscape, pared back to an austere simplicity, has inspired her with two rich seams to mine - seascapes and plants. Her encaustic seascapes, sensuous satin slabs anchored along a welded horizon, ooze light. The ancient beeswax and pigment technique, applied in molten layers, conveys a contained elemental energy, loading the northern colours within a saturated interior. Rendering down sea and sky to a semi-abstract geometry, can, in the hands of a lesser artist, be a lazy formula, where less, is just that, less. But Roder’s work, anchored in observation, convinces, rewards and delights the patient eye. Seasons, light and weather are all here, distilled through a northern romantic sensibility into beautiful paintings, crafted from simple materials transformed. Flowers and plants gathered from the artist’s garden are the focus for Roder’s other series. Spare and still, these delicate forms, isolated from the environment, seem, as though by osmosis to have been drawn into the soft wax tablets. In her search for a deeper understanding of the natural world Roder takes the humble and commonplace and with a precise thoughtful contemplation animates that which is essential and transient making poetry out of the ordinary.