Colombian artist GLEO is crazy about flowers, and she photographs them wherever she goes. She has a favourite in every country she’s been too. So it’s no surprise that she chose a floral still life – Vase of Flowers in a Window by Ambrosius Bosschaert – as the inspiration for her mural.
Flowers from different countries and seasons now adorn a wall measuring no less than 700m2 on Troelstrakade (Willem Dreespark) in Moerwijk – one of the biggest murals in the Netherlands!
GLEO
GLEO is from Cali, a big city in Colombia. She started street art at the age of 17 to brighten up her own neighbourhood. Painting helps her to be free and dispel the daily chaos, she says. You can now find her colourful artworks with flowers and portraits on walls in cities like São Paulo, Rabat and Brussels. Her Mauritshuis Mural is her first large mural in the Netherlands. There is also a canvas by GLEO at STRAAT MUSEUM Amsterdam.
Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder
Vase of Flowers in a Window is one of the highlights of the Mauritshuis collection. Bosschaert included no fewer than thirty different species of flowers in this vibrant bouquet. In preparation for this work, he spent a year studying the flowers individually, and was thus able to assemble a bouquet of flowers that do not actually all bloom at the same time. The painting thus presents a collection of the most beautiful flowers Bosschaert knew, including the tulip, which was still rare in Holland at that time.
GLEO chose this work by a master she had long admired. She prepared in a similar way. For years she had been collecting flowers she particularly liked in every country she visited, photographing them and studying them closely. She made a selection of her favourites for her mural, Flower Woman in the Window. The flowers in her exuberant bouquet also bloom at different times, and originate in different countries.
Platform
You need a platform secured to the building to paint a wall this high. The platform might seem pretty stable, but if the wind gets up, it swings back and forth. So you need a steady had and good ‘sea legs’ to keep the lines straight.
Imagine working from top to bottom on a small platform, with only limited room for your paints. GLEO regularly had to lower the platform to the ground to mix new shades and fetch new supplies of paints. That made this a time-consuming job, yet she still managed to finish it in 21 working days, despite the bad weather in September!
Different phases
The residents of the apartment block kept a close eye on all the different stages of the process. First, GLEO made a 'doodle grid' with yellow lines. A 'doodle grid' is a way of working in perspective on a large scale which uses a combination of symbols to mark certain points for the artist, without the need to set out a grid. GLEO then transferred her sketch to the wall in a striking purple colour. Then, to everyone’s surprise, an even layer of transparent yellow paint was applied over the entire wall, including the detailed sketch. Would this ever come right?
That was when the ‘real’ work began. GLEO reapplied the sketch, and everyone saw different areas of colour emerging. Large areas of colour applied with rollers, and details meticulously painted using smaller brushes.
Dutch pansies
GLEO also included her favourite flowers from the Netherlands: purple pansies.
She admitted to us that she had never painted pansies before, and she found it particularly challenging to find the right combination of colours.
The other purple flowers in this detail of her mural are from Colombia and they are found only in the mountains near Cali.
