Flora in the Arts

"Come closer to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose.” -“Letters to a Young Poet” by Rainer Maria Rilke

Expressionist artist, Vian Borchert’s latest landscape paintings currently on exhibit at Lichtundfire's "Flora and Fawna" group exhibition ongoing till the end of the Summer, evoke the idea of romance while remaining engaging and contemporary. As an expressionist artist, Borchert describes her artwork as a form of visual poetry. In her recent work, Borchert presents imagined landscapes of romantic fields while the nature depicted emerges to tell stories of far away lands.

At Lichtundfire gallery in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the current group exhibition titled “Flora and Fawna” showcases beautiful artwork that depict the flora along with fauna themes through the various visions of the exhibited artists. Concept and curation is by curator Priska Juschka.
The exhibition is till Aug 26 with receptions on these dates:
Reception and LES THIRD THURSDAY Walk-Thru: Thursday, August 18, 6–8 PM
End of Summer Closing Reception: Friday, August 26, 6–8 PM
Lichtundfire is located at: 175 Rivington Street
New York, NY 10002
Gallery Hours:
Tuesday-Saturday, 12–6 PM
Lichtundfire’s exhibition's link: https://www.lichtundfire.com/l...
Pictured here are three paintings by noted artist, Vian Borchert titled “A Sea of Flora”, “Over Fields” and "Highland Moor" which are on view at the exhibition. These new floral landscapes were especially created by Borchert for the “Flora and Fawna” exhibition. Here are some of the thought process that went into creating these floral landscapes by Borchert.
For this special Summer exhibition, Borchert’s paintings illustrate imaginative floral landscapes that hint on mysticism, literature and love for nature. The works created are done from imagination. They are imagined landscapes that insinuate romance and forgotten tales.
When Borchert set upon creating these floral landscape paintings, the artist wanted the paintings to look pensive, whimsical, romantic, subdued, deep and full of grandeur while remaining contemporary, suggestive and engaging. Borchert wanted the works to be awe striking while being silently powerful. The artist aimed for them to not only be pretty paintings of a floral theme but to be much more… She wanted them to become their own entity.
Gardening is one of Borchert’s favorite activities, and daily observation of the blooming flowers is somewhat of an obsession for the artist. Thus, Borchert took this project as a challenge to allow herself to dig deep into her own garden of creation to find fields of flora and hidden prairies all yearning to spring out of her to bloom into the canvas, and foretell their own stories that hint on romantic feelings while darkness and light step into the spotlight and become players in the color fields.
Borchert which also happens to be an award winning poet had written a short poem to accompany each title of the floral landscapes. Here are the poems for the pictured paintings.
For the “A Sea of Flora” painting:
Poem: “In a secret garden
I buried a seed
that bloomed and blossomed
into a field.”

For the "Highland Moor" painting:

Poem: “I stood there overlooking green heights
and how the flowers shook
at every heart beat.”

For the “Over Fields” painting:

Poem: “And just like that
the flowers understood
how to embrace nature."

For these works, V. Borchert was inspired by classic literature that were part of the artist’s formal education. The works represent abstractions collected from memories of classical literature that Borchert read as a child. Some of her favorite literary novels from “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë, 1847 to “The Secret Garden” by Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1911 make an entrance in these works and hint on snippets of a love story gone wrong, and a garden forgotten in time to be found again by a wandering child. For the idea of a “Secret Garden” symbolizes healing and how one’s well being is transformed through keeping a garden which in return adds to one’s happiness and health. For these work, the artist wanted to dig deeper into her soul allowing the artistic spirit to appear in each work. For Borchert, the creation of the floral landscapes felt like an out of body experience mingled with manual labor but also a labor of love. Inevitably, it is Borchert’s love for nature that authentically emerges clearly through these landscapes.

For more about the artist, Vian Borchert, visit: www.vianborchert.com