Bobbie Burgers is a Vancouver-based artist celebrated for her large-scale floral works that explore themes of ephemeral beauty and refined strength through expressive, gestural abstraction. Her work captures the tension between decay and vitality, inviting viewers into a sensorial experience of colour and form. Originating in emotive and expansive brushstrokes, Burgers’ work extends from painting into collage and printmaking elements. In reconfiguring recognizable representations of floral forms, she contends with the long history of the still-life in western art, asserting an atmosphere entirely her own, while simultaneously challenging conceptions of femininity and domesticity.
As we enter late winter, with slivers of spring poking through the lengthening days, Burgers’ work offers contemplations on time and transition. Her work speaks to cycles—the lifecycles of flora and fauna, as well as cycles of human interaction and introspection. Assembly invites visitors not only to explore the lifecycle of an artwork, but also an invitation into the process of creation itself. Just as the life of a flower, which inevitably requires decay and decomposition, involves assembly and reassembly—nutrients blooming into new florals, florals into gardens—so too do the gestural marks, stains, drawings and prints emerging from Burgers’ studio transform.
