Marieluise Bantel
Germany
About the artist
Marieluise Bantel is an artist from Germany who specializes in flower painting. The fact that she prefers to devote herself to this artistic theme is due to her closeness to nature, which can be traced back to her youth in a rural environment and early stays in the countryside in England.
She studied art at the "Freie Kunstschule Stuttgart - Academy of Art and Design" and graduated with a diploma. She has already received awards for her artistic works (1st place at the Art Award for Ash Wednesday, award in the US art magazine International Artist). In Germany, she has already had exhibitions in palaces and castles - including the Residenzschloss Ludwigsburg.
About the flower still lifes by Marieluise Bantel
In a world of standardized mass products, the individual loses its perceived value. Only an attentive look at individual characteristics reveals the essence and uniqueness of life.
Plants serve here as a metaphor for beauty and individuality in a world of mass products. The paintings from the project "The beauty of decay" show flowers in the process of withering, in which they show themselves once again in their splendor and at the same time in their fragility - each plant is thereby differently shaped and formed by the influences of the world and thus shows itself in its unique transience.
In this series Marieluise Bantel painted without a background on the canvas. This makes the painting technically very demanding, but at the same time allows full concentration on a subject that is so often avoided: decay.
The artworks are still lifes and combine three typical aspects of this genre: figurative art, flower painting and the reference to transience. But while most classical flower still lifes show whole bouquets, Marieluise Bantel focuses on individual flowers. This gives her and her works the opportunity to relate the vanitas motif, which points to the transience of life, directly to the individual. At the same time, she expands the admonishing still life concept with the element of beauty in her series of paintings. For it is precisely in decay that the fragile and noble grace of life and its individuality are revealed.
* This statement has been provided directly by the artist in association to their 16th International ARC Salon entries. This content has not been edited for typos or grammatical errors and has not been vetted for accuracy.
