Beyond Green: Carmel Van Der Hoeven
Nature has always been a starting point for me. I paint botanical scenes. I alter, distort, or
exaggerate them - not to hide what they are, but to suggest what else might be there.
My work explores the tension between what we see and what we understand. I’m
interested in how perception shifts - how each viewer brings their own experience to an
image, and how that changes the work itself. This idea, loosely inspired by the observer
effect in science, reminds me that nothing stays fixed once it’s being looked at.
Nature has always been a starting point for me. I paint botanical scenes. I alter, distort, or
exaggerate them - not to hide what they are, but to suggest what else might be there. I’m
curious about the things in nature that we don’t immediately see: movement, energy,
atmosphere. Things like wind, which you can’t see but can feel. That sense of something
just below the surface is what I’m often trying to get at.
Colour plays a big role in this. It’s never just descriptive - I use it to express mood, to shift
focus, or to break out of the expected. A tree doesn’t have to be green. I’m less interested
in accurate representation and more drawn to what happens when the brain fills in gaps -
when a few marks can become a bush, a shadow, or a horizon.
Having children has changed the way I think about observation. They respond quickly
and honestly to what they see, without needing to explain why. That kind of intuitive
reaction, free from overthinking or expectation, is something I keep in mind while painting.
I don't aim to tell a clear story in my work. I leave space for the viewer to find their own
way through it. What you see might not be what I saw, but that’s part of the point.
