Catalogue Humble

Humility keeps cropping up as a core value in all religions. ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’. Since becoming an artist, Marc Mulders has incorporated religion into his work. He was raised as a Catholic and although he does not blindly believe the Catholic rules and stories, religious values always seep into his philosophy and what he makes. ‘’I always wondered how I could continue to believe, without the fairy-tale. I embraced communism, I delved into Zen Buddhism, but I'm not a communist, I'm not a monk – I am a Catholic boy from Tilburg. And slowly but surely I started to realise that I had been raised with the same message of charity and self-sacrifice.’’

Self-sacrifice is an apt description of his work. This is not about rejecting Marc Mulders as an artist; on the contrary, it is more about the representation of something more significant. Something that is bigger than we are: namely, beauty.

He launches an attack on evil with his paintings, wanting to counter-balance all that is idiotic around us. He does this with abstract paintings of flowers, plants and animals that offer comfort and celebrate creation. He sends beauty out into the world in order to effectuate a genuine meeting between works of art and those who behold them.