The Association of Arts Pretoria is currently exhibiting works by renowned local artist Lynette ten Krooden under the collective title Mirari, which is the Latin for ‘to wonder at’; admire; miracle.Through French and later English, the word mirage also came into being. It perfectly captures the artist and her work, as she tells DIANE DE BEER:
If you spot glittering gold leaf somewhere on a table, chair or even the snacks at an arts event, it’s probably a sign that artist Lynette ten Krooden’s in the room.
“It’s her involvement with the Middle East many years ago that awakened it,” notes her close friend and fellow artist Margaret Gradwell-Truter, who divulges that the two of them are celebrating her first exhibition at the Association 40 years ago and now again. “As fellow artist, I (nervously) opened the exhibition at that time.”
It was wonderful to listen to her speech and to have her reveal so much about her friend, always with the emphasis on her art.
About Lynette’s trademark gold leaf she says that at the time it wasn’t something that was widely used in the art world. She even recalls some of the local art academics being quite scathing about the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt because of his use of gold leaf. Today his work records some of the highest prices paid for art and especially his trademark gold leaf receives high praise. In similar vein, another gold leaf practitioner, Alexis Preller, was also not rated. Today he is revered, she says, as we can all attest to.
Not that Lynette paid much attention. If you hear her speak about her work and where her inspiration lies, it’s always the landscape. “She viewed the universe from space, or flew across the desert or travelled through it with the Bedouins, or she found herself in awe of age-old mountains, rocks and fossils. But she doesn’t repeat what she has seen, she gives her audience the experience of wonderment which she experiences – she does it through a rich tapestry of forms and marks richly woven to form a whole,” explained Margaret.
“Lynette has used gold leaf as an integral part of the landscape that inspires her.” And that especially was again visible in this current exhibition.
Margaret embroiders: “She has unwaveringly used it as a medium for many years and has been able to master it, not as a decorative element but as a metaphor for the mirage, the mirari (miracle), that she has profoundly chased and captured, thereby enabling us, the spectator, to also wonder at the mirari.”
From her earliest days, she notes, Lynette was interested in the mysteries of the universe. The invisible – such as the effect of light on the earth – the glittering horizon, mist, sand, rocks and water. “This place that is a sanctuary for the wordless artist.”
And when Lynette talks unthinkingly about gold leaf, she tells how she is constantly picking up and gathering flecks of what might have fallen from something she is working on and using it again and again. And anyone who has ever picked up (or tried to handle) a sheath of gold leaf will know that it disintegrates in front of your eyes as if an invisible hand has reached out.
And still all these years later as her friend underlines, Lynette is filled with wonderment. “There’s a lifetime of art in my bones,” responds the artist. And even the fabric she wears reflects her love of what she creates.
When she talks of her travels, she thinks of small children sitting on the sand and instinctively drawing, making pictures, capturing their world. That’s what she does. With her physical reality often a hindrance, she has found ways to work, to deal with what life gives her and to escape into the mysteries she is always exploring. “It never stops,” she says – and neither will she. “I lost my heart to the creative process. It’s good for my heart.”
Stand in front of one of her paintings and it immediately opens up a new world. Even if you’re just drawn by the colour, that in itself is a whole world that she embraces. For her, there’s a childlike excitement when she creates a new work. With this exhibition it was also returning to old ways and techniques that brought fresh meaning. As an artist she is intent on always moving forwards, somewhere new, challenging the world and everything around her.
And in the process, she passes on that depth of feeling to those of us looking on hoping to discover more . Her miracle becomes ours. For her it is simply a curiosity and wonder that started many years ago which has become the eternal play on her changing canvasses.
One cannot but be touched.
The exhibition runs until September 23.
https://www.facebook.com/pretoriaartsassociation/sassociation/
Address: 173 Mackie St, Nieuw Muckleneuk, Pretoria, 0181
Open ⋅ Closes 5 pm
De Beer Necessities 