Blume V – When even a flower loses its certainty

A flower that escapes its own form

A flower is one of the simplest images in our visual world. It stands for growth, beauty and familiarity. Everyone recognizes it instantly.

Even in Flower V, the basic form remains intact. The petals are indicated, the structure is visible, and the motif remains unambiguous. At the same time, the flower seems to escape its own order. Colors shift, forms overlap, and some areas look as if they are just coming into being or already dissolving again.

The result is an image that hovers between recognition and transformation.

Smear Board – When simple signs become unstable

The Schmiertafel series explores widely known pictorial symbols such as flowers, smileys, trees or figures. They are simple forms that everyone recognises and whose meaning seems to be fixed.

In these paintings, the form remains while its execution becomes increasingly uncertain. Color no longer follows the expected paths, decisions become visible, corrections leave new traces. From something familiar, a state emerges between order and dissolution.

The works are about the fragility of simple certainties. They show how even stable signs can lose their self-evidence and how small shifts can open up a new, more open pictorial space.

Between lightness and decay

In particular, the colors of Flower V create a striking contrast. Light blues, yellows, pinks, and greens initially lend the painting a playful lightness. At the same time, the overlapping areas, open contours, and visible interventions appear as traces of an ongoing transformation.

Nothing seems definitively fixed. The flower appears to be both emerging and disappearing at the same time.

It is precisely this ambivalence that makes the work so compelling.

Expressive flower painting as an open process

The painting does not follow a rigid plan. Color fields are added, altered, reworked or partially taken back. Decisions remain visible and become part of the image.

This does not result in a perfect illustration of a flower, but in a living process in which order, chance, and improvisation meet.

Original painting by Mark Hellbusch

Flower V is a one-of-a-kind original from my studio in Wiesbaden. Like all works in the Schmiertafel series, the painting combines familiar pictorial signs with experimental painting and an open, process-based visual language.

Discover more works from the series

The Schmiertafel series includes flowers, smileys, trees and other familiar signs. Together they form a series about perception, change and the question of how stable our simplest certainties actually are.

Smear board,

medium formats and

colorful paintings

I have been a freelance painter since 1997 and have worked with a wide variety of themes in painting. While until 2007 I was occupied almost exclusively with expressive painting, today my focus lies more on experimental art. My personal background, as well as almost all artistic themes can be found under “About us.”

Studio in Wiesbaden – viewings by appointment.

Direct purchase and shipping also available.