Welcome
Just do it! It has become my motto.
For the first time in my life I believe in myself and feel that I have become a professional artist. It is a new and once in a life time experience combined with a lot of learning.
For years I searched for my Me and my personality. I experimented for a long time with abstract art-, and familiarized myself with various techniques such as oil on canvas, papier-maché, encaustics, watercolors and acrylics on paper, even working for a while in a goldsmith’s studio.
My development and constant search for that Something has brought me to where I am now. Developing my Magical-Poetic-Realism style has been a long journey, reflecting my own personal journey. I began to develop it in the early 90’s but only identified myself through it in 2003.
When I was pregnant with my first child I wanted to decorate the children's room with child-friendly art. Yet after a long search I still had not found anything appropriate. My husband laughed and said, “Why don’t you paint something yourself?” I did and I am thankful.
Today Magical-Poetic-Realism has become my style, the trademark through which Lydia van den Berg can tell her story.
I can’t stop painting!
It is true! When I am in my studio working I say to myself: “When this project is completed, then I will have a break, but I can’t stop painting. I feel just happy when I touch the colors and enjoy the feeling of the brush smoothly gliding over the paper to leave a permanent colored image.
My life is intense and exciting and I feel that there is so much to tell.
I hope you will enjoy!
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LYDIA VAN DEN BERG'S MAGIC WORLD
By Alois Steiner
Lydia shows in her pictures the cheerful world as discovered and imagined by children. The artist, however, uses her training and professionally applied method of portrayal to compose a world, something a child would never be able to do.
The obvious artistic skill distinguishes her work from naïve paintings. These often prefer a simplified presentation of farm and country scenes executed as faithful copies.
Lydia’s style can best be described as “Magical-Poetic-Realism.” Shown are always elements of the real world like, houses, trees, paddocks, clouds, flowers and animals; however, they are presented in a manner of poetic freedom and fantasy.
Often they are arranged like ornaments. The magic of imagination always dominates, for example by ignoring the classic perspective of space. The objects are dispersed over the whole picture in order to follow the laws of aesthetic, like harmony of color and intensity, and balancing the composition of geometrical forms.
It is therefore possible that in the same picture the sky with the sun appears and the night sky with the stars. Or the earth is seen as if the onlooker sits on the sun which dominates the foreground of the painting.
The artist always tells stories in pictures. And as in fairy tales, they do not only refer to the world of children but also to adults. This is achieved through the artist’s perfect painting technique.
Lately trough Lydia prefers increasingly also abstract representations. She creates them as masterfully as her figurative pieces, like a virtuoso. The pictures have titles giving a commentary, which lends the viewer valuable assistance (like Life Line, Curly Dreams etc.), although the strong visual language itself creates intense imaginations.
In these works we witness an artist who follows her path unconventionally and consistently. Her future creative development will certainly produce further new means of representations and expressions.
One only has to be able to read the story!
ALOIS STEINER (*1942) - Studied history of art, Andragogy (science of teaching adults), psychology and philosophy. He worked also as art critic and today lives near Zurich/Switzerland.