Marjolein Rothman’s (Eibergen,NL 1974) work presents an on-going research on the act of looking or gazing. By her way of painting she is deconstructing specific cultural symbols. She works in series. In the past her series have dealt with power structures, historical figures and religious artifacts.
Flowers are the subject of her current series. She draws inspiration from old Kodachrome slides of flowers that she found on the street. She was struck by the saturated, almost exaggerated colors. Her works evoke the genre of memento mori, a recurring theme in the Dutch Golden age. The works have an ephemeral character; her paintings often seem to appear and disappear from their ground. They appear to be incomplete or painted away. In this manner she looks for an essence, never hiding her mark making from the viewer: the brushstrokes, the drips of paint on the canvas or aluminum surface, they are all visible. In such a way her works invite to reflect on the way we perceive things.