Astrid Polman

Astrid Polman’s work unfolds alongside her life and revolves around themes such as vulnerability, strength, growth, and mortality. She explores the human experience, the body as a vessel of the spirit, and the relationship between humans and nature. Her art reflects the interplay between inner and outer worlds, body and mind, often carrying emotional weight. The pleasant and the painful coexist — it is up to the viewer to decide what they see.

She works with simple materials such as wool, thread, paper, ink and pencil, and values the slow, traditional process in which nature and creation come together. For the past few years, she has literally incorporated nature into her work through botanical (eco) printing, where leaves and flowers transfer their natural pigments onto paper by heating them. This partially uncontrollable process forms a collaboration with nature. Most colors in her work come from nature.

A key project is the “Botanica Humana” series, which focuses on the connection between humans and nature. This series now includes nearly 100 works. Her inspiration comes from medieval botanical books, old herbariums, anatomical drawings, her own earlier work, and her extensive archive of plant prints.

Since 2023, she has also been dyeing yarn with plants collected during her daily walks, using them to embroider a color circle per plant — aiming to visualize each plant’s inner color spectrum. She is also experimenting with making ink from roadside plants to use in her art. She would like to share the amazement about what we do not see on the outside of plants and humans in her work/research. 

Her work has been exhibited in many places across and beyond Europe and is included in numerous private collections.

“For me, peace starts with being at peace within: with everything that happens inside and outside us, both pleasant and unpleasant events/feelings. And that is practice! In nature, which always reflects, I experience what lives within me. In this specific work I want to depict that desire for peace in connection.”

Astrid Polman lives and works in Bemmel, Netherlands.

From the series “Botanica Humana” (nr. 65), botanical print (color from eucalyptus leaf), pencil on paper (27x32cm)

I astridpolman (work since 2017) 

W astridpolman.nl (work until 2017)