“…A landscape is the spiritual memory of a place for her. She says she can listen to the echoes of ancient places and can hear the hidden stories they tell. Since she is a painter and not a storyteller, she puts the stories in paint.
There is a trance-like quality to them. Ten Krooden is a séance, a medium through which the spirit of a place speaks to us. Her paintings are vehicles that explore the vastness of landscapes and tell us of their hidden magic and the meaning of rain, rocks and sands…..
…As one writer has pointed out, “her works are poetic, primitive and often magical, reminding the spectator of humanity’s earliest experience of a dangerous and wonderful world. She uses signs reminiscent of Bushmen drawings and ancient Egyptian writing, against backgrounds influenced by European genres like abstract expressionism. Her colours are deep and dark, enhancing the feeling of obscurity, primeval chaos and magic…
So to describe her as a “landscape artist” does not do justice to her metier It will be too narrow a definition and restrictive when applied to this scholarly and well-traveled artist. Her paintings, with their multiple layerings, of rich colours, a unique gold-leaf process and sharp graphic line work, are nothing less than visual feasts of spiritual manifestations.
At first look, they are vast and, seemingly still. But a closer look reveals details that are varied and intense. Embedded fossils, slush from a golden rain, amber coloured rocks, reflections in a calm sea, a gathering nightfall, doors that show mysterious messages, stone waves in the rock formations of ancient Petra, the dignity of a place of worship atop a hill, a deserted beach in Dubai, white spring flowers near Hatta that flaunt their beauty outrageously, the magic of the Mussandam peninsula or a Slow dawn in the mist – are filled with exquisite details that elevate her paintings from the mundane to the spiritual…”
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Muhammad Yusuf
“What Lynette did with this exhibition is to stand back to take a deep breath and to respire this breathing back into her work. She surely did not betray her own artistic yearnings since all the works here, even the light and sensitive drawings (which Lynette has for the first time put on an exhibition) retain the same atmosphere of mystery and wonder. By giving breath to her work – and at the same time giving us the feeling of breathing – her works, in the words of James Douglas, acquire the quality of a reverie of suspended thought. Or, to use the words of May Sarton, the works become felt presences.
Indeed, Lynette, your work displayed here tonight, carries a splendid message, namely that even the most accomplished artist such as you are, must constantly take a deep breath and in a sense re-invent his or her art. I am sure with your spirit and artist mind filled with so much air and the renewed freshness of breathing, you are ready to climb the next high mountain of artistic achievement. “
Prof Marinus Wiechers
It is many moons later and the quest is still the same, perhaps looking deeper into the essence of our the hidden ,living, breathing landscape.
WATER as a theme has become AQUIFERS as luminescent, magical spaces, imbedded in the rock. Spaces where gold as the purest metal is formed, where water leaves behind opals and crystals.Jewelboxes and fossils finds. Life-giving aquifers that is constantly threatened by the exploits of mankind.
INDIGO, the colour Titles like TIMELINES,MIRAGE,FIRE STONE,PRIMAL DELTA are some of the revisited and new stories.
“SHORELINES” maps the geological eroding and transformation of our shorelines.
My paintings try to capture the metaphysical beauty of sea, sand, stones,fossils and earth.The geological eroding and transformations of our Living Earth.
LYNETTE TEN KROODEN
2015