Artist Focus :: Anke Roder

&Gallery is delighted to announce the start of our new monthly online artist focus. 

It is with great pleasure to introduce the work of Anke Roder, who has exhibited in several group exhibitions at &Gallery. 

Anke Roder (Bayreuth 1964) is a Dutch based painter living in Zandeweer, north coast of the Netherlands. Her studio is surrounded by a large artist garden, composed like a living colour changing painting and combining form and structure of plants. These colours of nature are of great importance for her paintings. The blushing sky has similar shades of pink and red as the blooming roses, translated into colour tones in her landscapes. Coastal walks reflect a greater space, empty planes and fields are changing every season and absorb the luminous skies. We remember clouds, shades and shadows, reflections of light, all together as a philosophical space. She always had a deep interest in natural surroundings and phenomena and works with an awareness of being part of a greater picture.

View on colour: the landscape seen as floating colour fields, with subtle changes of light and atmosphere, Colour value, radiant colours surrounded by colour harmonies with painterly freedom

An orchestration of colour: as a painter she creates soothing colour melodies of places in between the lost paradises and dreamed utopias. Places she travelled resonate in her landscape paintings and refer to old masters in eastern and western landscape art.

Combining materials: the sky part painted in many layers of encaustic is a space of the unknown, the oil part below with firm strokes of palette knife and brushes of different size is the materiality of our surroundings. Combining these two elementary different ways of painting we see unexpected colour relationships and a relaxed approach to interpreting forms and shapes as seen in realistic landscapes.

Focus on the essential elements of coastal landscapes, the abstract distance of the horizon, empty places that connect future and past of all times.

LIGHT – HORIZON – OPEN SPACE – COLORSCAPES

In her botanic paintings and collage works we see a great sense of proportion – giving minor accents the right energy to have effect and tempering big surfaces just enough to prevent them from dominating.  And these especially ensure that the curious representations of vegetation comfort rather than haunt, enchant rather than alienate.

Click to view on The London Magazine website

Roder’s encaustic seascapes and sensuous satin slabs are anchored along a welded horizon. The artist adopts an ancient beeswax and pigment technique, which she applies in molten layers, creating a contained elemental energy. This method, combined with the northern colours within a saturated interior, makes the works ooze with endless light. Roder's work is anchored in observation, as she renders sea down to sky. These scenes are distilled through a northern romantic sensibility, capturing the seasons, light and weather.

In search for a deeper understanding of the natural world, Roder works with the humble and commonplace, making poetry out of the ordinary.