Sjoerd Buisman

Sjoerd Buisman is a Dutch artist who divides his time between Holland and France. His show in 'the gallery' at Grange House finished on 15 December 2000 but there is a 12pp colour catalogue, still available, which accompanied the exhibition

Consticted Pumpkin
1971

Overgrown Molleton Cloth
1970

Lindenbogen
1997

Sjoerd Buisman is a Dutch artist who works with nature; often controlling its form and development. He is very successful in Holland and has recently completed several private commissions as well as working on long term landscaping projects

His love of nature began over thirty year ago just as Buisman was leaving his studies at the Art Academy in Rotterdam. He was to return to the Academy seven years later to teach, at which time his work was included in a touring exhibition by the Dutch Art Foundation. He was, at that time (1970's), still living in Haarlem where much of his Upside Down work was evolving. This work, initiated in his studio, began when he purposely hung out to dry willow saplings, fixed on a line, and positioned upside down

For several years bags, petri dishes and jiffypots littered his studio and the natural ingredients ranged from sprouting seeds to moulding objects. Buisman experimented with phototropics and built controlled light boxes. The discovery of molleton as an agreeable and adaptable 'canvas' meant that Buisman's could further manipulate the growing process, for example a work entitled Overgrown Molleton Cloth, After Three Days Upside Down

As he and the projects outgrew his studio, Buisman moved outdoors, introducing duckweed to a pond (controlled/contained). building a living willow bridge across a canal and longer term projects such as Knotted Willow Branch which was photographed (in-process, as it were) in 1975, 1978 and 1985

Sjoerd Buisman needs to be a patient man. Whether it is grafting together serveral species of cacti for his Homage to Brancusi or, on a shorter time scale, Buisman's series of Constricted Squash where a pumpkin, for instance, is constrained from free growth by a leather belt. Once fully grown one is left with a vegetable with a waist and yet the result is so much more visually beautiful than the description suggests. As this work progressed Buisman added words carved on the squashes' skin which grew to become an inherent part of the fully realised (grown-up) vegetable. It was a short step to the Photosynthesis Elder which not only incorporated words but highlighted the leaves' own range of colour spectrum. It is from this creative period of work that one can see the natural emergence of Buisman's larger civic projects such as Lindenbogen in which two arches of Linden trees (each arch 169m) were planted at the side of the Haarlemmerhout road in Haarlem. This work is nearly a decade old and yet is only just now reaching Buisman's original intention. It is symptomatic of Buisman's work that it, like much of his earlier work, shows a complicit understanding and respect for the natural world we live in while at the same time being manipulated, by the artist himself, from seed to maturity