Thought Trails by Jackie Mulder

Mulder’s work—whether in the form of small, intricate elements or expansive installations—unfolds as a quiet exploration of chance and vulnerability. Her visual language arises from the interplay between memory and perception, translating past experiences and present states into a material ecosystem of gestures and traces. Increasingly, she turns to techniques that loosen control, allowing for unpredictability to shape the outcome. This is a practice built on movement—on walking, returning, revising—where the process itself leaves visible marks of thought in flux.

Nature has steadily assumed a central role in this evolving vocabulary. Embroidery extends into roots; trees and mountains emerge not as static motifs but as living metaphors for the space between fragility and resilience. These natural forms become vessels for emotional resonance, drawing lines between the inescapability of origin and the possibility of reinvention. Mulder’s landscapes are not escapes but reflections—frameworks through which to encounter memory, time, and the layered consequences of becoming.

In parallel, her practice speaks to the tension of contemporary life, where stillness is often devalued and introspection displaced by constant stimulation. Nature, in this context, becomes both refuge and provocation—a setting in which to lose one’s bearings and find them again. It opens space for wandering, for following half-formed thoughts and intuitive trails, for constructing meaning in the absence of noise. Through this lens, Mulder’s work invites a slow return to presence, where silence is not emptiness but invitation.

What emerges is a quiet but insistent act of contemplation. Organic textures, repeated gestures, and fragile materials form an ecosystem where healing and memory coexist. Each work is the result of a choreography of movements—some singular, others obsessive—that make visible the process of becoming. The result is neither static nor conclusive, but a continuous line of force: experiential, tentative, enduring.