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.

WRITEN BY          Alois Steiner – Zürich, Switzerland, 2008

PHOTO IMAGE    Day and Night – 2x 13”x 18”, Acrylics on French Paper BFK Rives, Solo Exhibition AGORA Gallery “No Boundaries”, Manhattan, 2011