With her large, dynamic paintings, Eline Boerma (1999) immerses the viewer in a sensory experience. Her work often centres on the boundlessness of nature: like light, water and wind, the canvases resist stasis. Boerma belongs to a new generation of painters influenced by Abstract Expressionism, which she reworks in a contemporary way. Surrealism, the Baroque and Absurdism are also important points of reference in her practice. She works with oil paint and oil sticks, varying her handling of paint, from translucent to dense, from controlled to loose. Through her intuitive way of working, Boerma embraces the adventurous nature of art.
For the works she presents at Prospects, Boerma has, for the first time, drawn inspiration from social movements, social injustice and class struggle. She studied photographs of contemporary demonstrations. Rather than copying these images, she drew inspiration from the crowds and movements they depict, as well as the more abstract themes she associates with them, such as control and chaos, repression and freedom, destruction and reconstruction. For Boerma, painting is a way of exploring how certain dynamics in the world might shift. She views the painting process itself as a conversation, following where the paint leads and responding to it. The process usually begins with an idea or a feeling, but the image itself emerges on the canvas. The resulting paintings can be seen as a form of resistance to a world that increasingly seems driven by rationality, efficiency and material gain.
Text: Sarah van Binsbergen