In Maite Bäckman’s work, plants are much more than botanical motifs: they become intimate and faithful portraits, treated with the same solemnity and precision as a study of the human face. Leaves, flowers, and stems are represented with their wrinkles, folds, and singularities, revealing not an idealized vision of nature, but the unrepeatable uniqueness of every organism. Her work invites us to pause before the everyday to recognize the extraordinary that dwells within the particular.
Often decontextualized, these vegetal forms appear inserted into artificial environments: plastics, fabrics, and manufactured surfaces that dialogue with the organic. In this intersection of materials, the artist establishes a metaphor for the human experience: plants are not simply observed, but inhabited as an emotional mirror. Through them, Bäckman articulates personal and universal narratives, constructing a visual poetics where nature and psyche intertwine.
Since she grew up and studied Fine Arts in Madrid, she found in the Prado Museum and the great masters of oil painting an aesthetic influence that would stay with her forever. Oil paint, with its technical richness and its capacity to capture nuances, textures, and light, constitutes her primary language. Photography, for its part, has been a constant tool in her approach to reality, functioning as a threshold to the visual and an exercise in acute observation.
Her gaze always stems from a commitment to the truth: an honest quest to understand and represent reality without filters, revealing both its harshness and its beauty. The work of Maite Bäckman is, ultimately, a visual reflection on existence, fragility, and the connection with the environment we inhabit.
