New Collection by Berend Boorsma

Artist Statement: The process of allowing a work to ‘Come Into Being’ is to let the gestures on the canvas unfold without demanding a result. It’s like engaging with the work for the first time on each approach, to let the work arrive in its truest form. To be able to do this is to accept that the act of painting is an endless conflict between desire and outcome. It’s a struggle, often terribly frustrating and sometimes disappointing. I try to be aware of that, and resist the urge to run away from the discomfort.

Sometimes, by that very act of awareness, the struggle ends, I reach a state of openness, and the work reveals itself. It often results in something entirely different than I imagined – something beyond ego, vanity or self glorification. Without attachment to an outcome, a work can reach a state of ‘ziran’ – a concept in Daoism that literally means “of its own, by itself” – and encompasses natural, spontaneous, free, and timeless qualities. Like a distant dot glimpsed on the horizon, this is what I aim for in my practice.