please visit Lizelle's website for more: www.lizellevdb.com

"My work can be described as abstracted symbolic and metaphorical forms inspired by landscape, nature and female sexuality. Physicality both in process and resulting surface is very important. The work is provocative and intimately tactile.

"My current body of work, entitled life forms/forme, has been born(e) of my own experience of pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood; coupled with the intense search for self-identity that resulted from moving away from my land of birth.

"Women are powerful and fertile even when they bleed. For me this speaks of a poignant connection with nature and her cycles. This series of paintings seeks to create a visual language that explores the places where the ebb and flow of our emotions and bodies touch and merge with the ever (un)changing spiral of natural life. Is it not vital for us to respect and identify our emotional responses to the land that suffers to nurture us?

"When nature is abstracted to form symbols of the subconscious, the resulting images may be simultaneously personal and universal. A place that creates a strong vibration with our emotions can spark a powerful process of personal exploration. For me the expression of this process holds the exciting potential to communicate/facilitate experiencing our natural environment and our selves in a heightened way.

"Achieved through the conscious analysis of spontaneous subconscious material, my work method echoes a process closely related to the Jungian concept of the process of individuation. If we can allow the free ebb and flow of our most powerful feelings and expressions; whether they be jubilant or dark; we truthfully embrace a multi-faceted psyche whose different components always strive towards full individuation and unity. This is why I feel strongly that art and artists have a prominent role to play in addressing issues surrounding a dispassionate consumerist world culture."