Berdien Nieuwenhuizen (Nederland) "Patches of sunlight playing on the wooden panelling of my grandmother’s summerhouse. Summery flora reflected in the white blossom of winter. Frosted flowers hold a promise: soon it will be spring. (…) Originally, I used floral motifs in the patterns I designed for interior furnishings. Now I use them as a structure cut into paper. In my opinion, this way of working has not only resulted in a new choice of material - paper instead of fabric - but has also resulted in more liberated work bearing various emotional values, or better still: emotional fruit. After all, paper can vary enormously, it can be: thick or thin, flexible or rigid, smooth or textured, matt or glossy, transparent or opaque. Paper is inherently fragile. It doesn’t last for centuries. It isn’t resistant to fire or water. This transience makes paper unpretentious. My choice of paper is dependent on the image I have in mind. I have a preference for paper from India. It is thin with a silk-like quality yet, because of the fibres of the plants and wood remnants used to make it, robust. The fragile appearance of this type of paper reinforces the transience of the stylized floral motifs.(…)" From: Timeless Paper, Leiden 2002 © Compres Publishers Ltd