Bette Adriaanse
Spring
2008
Triptych - 450 x 120 cm
Paper, pencil
A wall-sized drawing, framed as a triptych, depicting birds and flowers in different stages of growth. A young bird with its beak wide open sits on the ground, next to a blooming flower with red veined petals and protruding stamen. On the right side of the drawing an egg lies between shoots that have just pushed their heads above the soil, the cross-section of an avian fetus is visible inside of it. On the left of the drawing a bird marches away, its beak wide open.
Lightly drawn colors come from the beak and spread out over the drawing, connecting the beak of the baby bird, the bee, the flower and the fetus, in bacteria-like patterns.
‘Stars of the show, however, include young Dutch artist Bette Adriaanse, whose epic Lente (...) shows just how much you can do with a pencil. Fine, metallic, open-beaked birds; the similar fragility of a bee’s wing and a poppy petal – all of it rendered with grace and precision.’
Review in ‘Her Royal Majesty’, 19/10/2012, Paris-based magazine for art and literature
