BLOEM,
FLOWER IN DUTCH
by Loutje Hoekstra
The first word that I learned to say as a very small child was: “Bloem” - “flower” in dutch.
All these memories and fundamental ways of perceiving my surroundings came back together in the creation of the artwork that I made for this project.
Being a woman, I remember how I had to, and still
am growing a relationship with my own vagina. It
is a mystic world that is very much mine, but also
very much hidden to myself.
Precisely this for me is the reason I wanted to participate in this project. I had never explicitly tried to phrase or express what the flower of life is to me, but I knew there is a wealth to be shad there. Also, she has been too often simplified, been taken off her depth and sexualized. Therefore, to open up this world and extend the experience and understanding of it into the wildness arts can bring, seemed like a mission that came at the perfect time.
Whilst painting I started to understand that there are many ways to have the flower of life depicted and my imaginations became more abstract every time I would dive.
I eventually decided it to be the landscape, where I had started, to be the image that I want to evoke for the flower of life. I was trying to build this fundamental yet sensual landscape that holds life.