Sonia Steidle

At first glance, Sonia Steidle's plant portraits appear to be full of joy, brightly coloured, fresh and carefree. You can feel the joy with which she tends her models in her own garden, but you can also tell from the clarity and strength of the lines that she studies famous old depictions of (medicinal) plants such as Leonhart Fuchs' "Herbal Book of 1543" and other, less well-known and contemporary compendia. In doing so, she looks for the growth forms and also the often hidden, microscopic face of the plants, in order to then draw and paint them so large that the structure and ornamentation captivate us just as much as the lush colors.

Whether in large-format pictures, often only booklet-sized panels or in simple wooden slats of different heights and widths - the "plant slats" - Sonia Steidle always succeeds in achieving a double hit: despite the respective isolation of the individual plants, the vitality and lushness of rampant nature is present everywhere.

These are not academic plant cuts and not gentle flower pictures, but colourful powerhouses analogous to nature.

www.soniasteidle.de