Marc Mulders, Heir to Tradition
(Jaap Goedegebuure) The Low Countries - 1995, № 3, pp. 62-67
From close up, Marc Mulders' paintings look like tanned hides covered in scars, or the gnarled bark of a tree. The canvas is covered in scratches and scoring, traces of the knife that appears to have tattooed the paint into it. The likeness to a tanned skin suggests a form of life that continues in the coagulated end product. The term still-life takes on a new meaning here: life is stopped stil like a single frame from a film. The dynamics of Mulders' flower pieces and portrayals of dead wild animals confirm this impression; they also show how much he differs from the seventeenth-century detail painters with whom he shares this choice of subject. The life-dynamic that also appears to continue into the process of decomposition is given shape on canvas in the series that Mulders paints: roses, dead rabbits and deer are, in a series of works, followed in a process of transformation which stil carries on even in death.
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