BAS MEEUWS

Born 1974, Heerlen, The Netherlands

To really see Bas Meeuws’ flowers, you have to take your time. If you are too hasty, you will just see a vase of flowers, but if you look more closely, you will see that each and every flower has an incredible beauty. There is the reflection of the light from a leaf, the elegant arch of a stem. Your gaze explores petals, insects and leaf veins, roams the landscape behind the flowers and lingers on the vase, with its distinct shape and decoration. You now start to notice that there is a friction: the proportions between the flowers are strange, the play of light and shadow has something enigmatic. 

Looking properly is for the eye what tasting a refined dish is for the tongue. Bas Meeuws’ work seduces you into employing the power of sight for pure sensory pleasure. 

Our gaze follows that of the artist. Meeuws has a sharp eye for the richness of the shapes, colours and textures of flowers, insects and birds. He observes them intensely, whether they are in his own back garden, a municipal park, the Muiderslot gardens, the Hortus Botanicus in Leiden or the magnificent national parks of Taiwan. Camera, software and printing techniques are extensions of his unparalleled human eye. He uses technology to give us, the spectators, what he has seen. “See how beautiful it is” is what his flower still lifes are silently saying. A feast for the eye. 

Anneke van Wolfswinkel (The Netherlands)
Writer and art critic