Florescence by Leisl Baker: A review by Arts Writer & Critic, Sandy Pottinger

The word “florescence”, the dictionaries tell us, comes from the Latin meaning “to bloom.” But the word conjures much more than that as it symbolizes the epitome of spring. Plants that have snuggled in hibernation through winter, unfurl and stretch and embrace the awakening season. It is a time of fruitful energy, not just for flowers, but also for the blossoming of the human spirit nurtured by the promise of summer.

Leisl Baker’s paintings take us to that place. In an era dominated by the Internet and slick, commercial veneers where galleries of generic flower paintings present wall decoration devoid of creative originality and personal interpretation, Baker shows us a true artist’s vision. The actual “Florescence” series of eight larger paintings comprises intense surfaces, gestural detail, and an intriguing, ambiguous sense of space. Depth is suggested by the play of light and shade where the viewer could almost reach into the painting, and through the foliage, to pick a flower. The loose, expressive brush work, the opposite of precise photo realism, is an emotional response to location and subject.

Leisl Baker has applied her own version of the Japanese aesthetic of “wabi-sabi” that acknowledges beauty in the imperfect and the transient. There are sprightly flowers, newly bloomed, there are blousey, drooping heads of faded radiance that have peaked and slumped. Even in the more illustrative and decorative series of flower portraits painted on Perspex attached to wooden support cradles, the flowers carry the soft focus of blurred memory. In a further group of random still life subjects, Baker has captured more feeling than detail. Vases and tabletops provide containers and settings for flower studies that are more interpretations than exercises in botanical accuracy. They are imbued with distinct personalities which, however, still capture and honour the essence of the imagery tempered through recollection.

Leisl Baker’s work salutes both Impressionism and Expressionism. The allusion to Impressionism translates through light, colour, and an emotional understanding of form. The master of the Impressionists, Claude Monet maintained that the motif, or subject, was secondary and that, in his paintings, he wanted to depict what existed between the subject and himself. He said he wanted to paint the air that held the flowers, the bridge, or the house. This is what Baker seems to do with an almost effortless ease, an expressive, yet personal statement that touches the essential being of her subjects. It also evokes the aim of Mondrian, another famous artist, who commented with respect to his sequence of cherry tree paintings, that he wanted to capture the essence in nature, what he termed “the treeness of the tree.” Baker has given us this essence in her subjects: imagery observed, filtered through memory, and translated as an illusion of a reality distilled by feeling and response.

The exhibition “Florescence” is not just about flower paintings. It is an essay about the vagaries of nature, fleeting moments, dashes of colour, the transience of beauty, respect, and the sharing of a personal perspective.