Bas Meeuws

Oil on panels makes way for digital photography. Bas Meeuws is a young photographer who is injecting the traditional Dutch genre of the flower piece with new élan. He composes his work the way the old masters did, flower by flower in luxury and splendour. The result is a layered photography that transcends time.
Meeuws’ process is similar to that of the seventeenth-century flower painters. The starting point for his monumental pieces are digital photographs of individual flowers using the same lighting. Each flower is photographed several times in various positions but with a varying exposure to build up a digital library. Meeuws’ ‘flower library’ is like a modern version of the seventeenth-century tulip books and other botanic pieces from that period.
The precision and the time Meeuws takes to make his pieces can also be compared with the old masters. The compilation of a good flower library in particular demands time and dedication. Meeuws composes his pieces from this digital library but he can’t always find the flower that he wants right away. A flamboyantly undulating tulip can be constructed from five different photographs. Meeuws enlarges and reduces images, adjusts colouring, weaves flowers and stalks together and adds snails and insects; everything in order to achieve an amazing picture. But the contours of the flowers still have black edges. Meeuws cleans these up digitally with meticulous eye work. He then examines the shadow and light in the piece: everything has to be right: the shadow that anchors a ladybird to a stalk, the reflection of the vase, the disappearance of the lowest layers of a flower in the dark. Meeuws is a painter of fine art: the computer mouse, his brush.