17 August 2013

Warm, wet, new: no thoughts

Hilda Oomen is a painter with a passion for flowers, gardens and light. 




«Strong, simple and beautiful images are what I am most interested in painting in my small work.»

«The large gardens, flower beds and the acres of field & bush of the place where I grew up [?, Ontario, Canada] has left an indelible image on my mind. Gardening and painting go hand in hand for me and it continues to be my main source of subject matter.»

Hilda Oomen

















Artist's statement
«Borrowed landscape: a practice in Asian garden design which utilizes and incorporates a distant landscape into one’s own garden.»

«Some of the interests that motivate me to paint are also found in the art of garden making. I have spent years working in gardens as a means of support and, at times, as a substitute for painting. The borrowed landscape concept is particularly relevant to the work I am producing. The imagery and experience of the time I have spent in gardens unexpectedly found its way into the paintings. I realized I was pairing fragments of intimate details of gardens with several different views and often a distant, smaller fragment of landscape. The mosaic-like building of these compositions developed naturally from this idea and from an enduring interest in collage. I see the borrowed landscape concept as a beautiful metaphor for the self and the personalizing of the world at large into one’s own private world.»

Hilda Oomen




Adachi garden, Yasugi (AsianInsights)


Warm spring sun
Wet garden
New green shoots 
– No thoughts.

Hilda Oomen



Loving is eternal innocence
And the only innocence is not thinking...

Alberto Caeiro / Fernando Pessoa