ABOUT EFFLEUREMENTS
I started loving plants and flowers a long time ago.
As a child, my favorite playground was the forest in front of our house in Germany. I spent hours and hours into it, building a cabin 8 m high in a tree I named Felix, with the help of my friends, or alone. Maybee, I always had a special connection, or bound with the nature !
Since a few years now, on every place I go, I am collecting and drying flowers and plants, without any intention, just for the beauty of it. I realize that everytime I open my dedicated “drying books”, I am completetely enchanted by all these tresors !
Two, three years ago, when all my finds were once displayed in my studio, I started instinctively to see them as “a palette of colors and shapes”. In stead of taking brushes and paints in my hand, I used the dried leaves and flowers, as a raw material, to work with. The FOLIUM Books were born.
Then, during the first lockdown in BE, during this beautifull and warm spring 2020, I had plenty of time to observe the nature around me reborning after the cold and dark winter. It really helped me going through this weird period … Every day, even on the few hours, flowers appeared…. on trees, bushes, in the gardens, in the woods, in the open fields……This was sooooo beautifull…….finally, and strong of my FOLIUM experiences, it resulted in the first EFFLEUREMENTS, that I had the chance to show in the group exhibition IN ARCADIA at the Husk Gallery during Summer 2020.
Since then, I went on with my explorations, using this material to express ideas and feelings, questionning life, society, human relations, sprituality, etc
In this curent exhibition EFFLEUREMENTS, you can see a selection of DENTELLES , PAIRES, UNIONS, MORPHOSES, SOUFFLES and RECOLTES DANOISES, all metaphores for inner transformations.
In french EFFLEUREMENTS means beeing touched on a very subtil way. In this word, you can also find the word FLEUR, meaning flower. I choosed this play of words to describe the state of mind I am in when I walk in the nature, or when I work in my studio with the materials it provides me. I am very thankfull to her, the NATURE. – May 2021 – P. Lorge