The seasons of Gerry Dobbelaer

Gerry Dobbelaer was one of the first artists we asked to paint miniatures for the Contemporary Book of Hours and Pilgrims ‘Seasons of Life’. We were familiar with her work and were convinced that she could create beautiful miniatures with her extremely detailed way of painting, the application of transparent paint veils and the use of light-dark contrasts.

And yes, Gerry painted the four seasons as only she can: a spring full of anticipation, a cheerful, enterprising summer, a combative, resilient autumn and a winter to recover and forge new plans. In the picture you can see winter. The calm, the cool blue colors, the introverted woman, the missing strings: everything is ready to start again… The attentive viewer can see in the left corner that Dobbelaer himself has already secretly started.

Together, the four miniatures give a beautiful picture of the repetitions in nature in general and a human life in particular.

Gerry Dobbelaer was born in 1939 in Druten and lives and works in Nijmegen. She was trained as an art teacher and took lessons at the Academy of Visual Arts in Arnhem. Nowadays she paints exclusively with oil paint on panel.

Over the years, Gerry developed a style all his own. Her intuition and aptitude naturally brought her to the atmosphere of the work of the Flemish Primitives and Renaissance painters such as Botticelli. Initially, the technique was oil on canvas, but she increasingly worked exclusively on panel. Panel gives the possibility to bring fine painting to great perfection. At a first exhibition, the work was aptly characterized as “poetic realism”. The work is realistic, but not without further ado. The performance must be able to move or evoke something.