perennial - Trevor Van den Eijnden

One of our feature artists for NOCTURNE this year was Trevor Van den Eijnden. 
For the event Trevor provided us a breathtaking and affecting body of work in memory of his late mother, Charmaine. 
We are honoured to showcase Trevor's works and would love to share, in his own words, Trevor's intention behind these pieces. 

 Find a link to view the entire show at the bottom of this post.

Trevor Van den Eijnden, 
Triumphant Red Yellow, Acrylic and Mineral Paints on Board, 12"x12"

 

Trevor Van den Eijnden is a visual artist, designer and educator from Pictou, Nova Scotia, based in Vancouver (with an upcoming return to Nova Scotia planned). Working across photography, painting, sculpture, installation and text, he explores nature, time, memory and grief. He holds degrees from Dalhousie, NSCAD and Emily Carr, and serves as President of CARFAC BC.

 

Trevor Van den Eijnden, 
Perennial Pink, Acrylic and Mineral Paints on Board, 12"x12"

Trevor Van den Eijnden, 
Dark Parrot I, Acrylic and Mineral paints on Board, 12"x12"

perennial 

"In 2018, I moved into a home with a large garden. Although I had never enjoyed the weeding, tilling and general drudgery of gardening as a child, I approached this new endeavour with earnestness. I planted California lilacs, English lavender, magnolias, cherry trees, roses, lilies and hundreds of tulips that would burst into colour every spring. I built an oasis in the middle of downtown that connected me back to my family, many of whom were and are avid gardeners.

Top: Purple Yellow, White Blue
Bottom: Yellow Burgundy, White Purple 
Trevor Van den Eijnden, Acrylic and Mineral Paints on Board, 6"x6"
Sold individually.

The warmth of spring arrives early in Vancouver, often beginning by the end of February. Since moving here in 2007, I have made a habit of lightly taunting my mother with photographs of flowers in bloom long before the snow had melted in Nova Scotia. But since having my own garden, those photographs often came with questions, answers, and a connection through a shared interest. She was equal parts envious of the flowers already blooming here and delighted by the promise that her own garden would soon follow.

Trevor Van den Eijnden, 
Golden Leo, Acrylic and Mineral Paints on Board, 12"x12"

 

 

Charmaine, Trevor's mother

My mother, Charmaine, died suddenly in August 2025. I was already in Nova Scotia for a visit when it happened, but I returned to Vancouver only two days after we buried her. What was meant to be my annual trip home became a tragedy from which I was abruptly carried away from back to the other side of the country. People grieve differently based on circumstance and constitution, and what I came to find was that my day-to-day life did not contain the same visible absence experienced by my father and siblings. I did not, for example, return to rooms that were suddenly empty. The physical shape of my life in Vancouver remained mostly unchanged, and that distance softened but delayed the immediate reality of her absence.

A collection of flower's from Charmaine's garden.

 

 

Trevor Van den Eijnden, 
Perennial Red and White, Acrylic and Mineral paints on Board, 12"x12"

 But when February arrived, and the crocuses began pushing through the soil, I realised that I would not be sending her photographs this spring. Her absence felt different in that moment than it had during the holidays and milestones that had already passed. It felt sharper and less opaque. So, I began painting the flowers from my garden that I still wanted to talk to her about. For me, these images became a way to give form to my grief, while still conversing with her, albeit in a transformed way. These works are a salve for my grief, but also a way of transforming something deeply personal into a point of connection with others—grief transformed into empathy.

Trevor Van den Eijnden, 
Garden Pink, Acrylic and Mineral Paints on Board, 6" x 6"

 

A collection of flowers from Trevor's garden.

 

These are my first paintings in more than a decade. In a nod to my Dutch heritage, they draw on the tradition of the memento mori, but shift its emphasis. While the wilting flower in Dutch still-life painting often reminds us that everything living must pass, these works suggest that what has passed can remain present through memory, ritual and conversation. 

Trevor Van den Eijnden, 
Jan Van Nes Parrot Yellow I, Acrylic and Mineral paints on Board,12"x12"

For me, these flowers carry both mortality and recurrence. The work grows from my longstanding interest in grief, nature and the experience of time, with flowers holding all three at once. They emerge, change and disappear, then return the following year. Their beauty is temporary, but it is not meaningless. They remind us that loss and renewal can exist beside one another, even when renewal does not erase grief. These paintings are shaped by distance: between Vancouver and Nova Scotia, between one spring and the next, and between the past I remember and the present I am learning to live in. Together, they form a quiet tribute to my mother—the “Flower Child” my dad first met over CB radio—and to the conversations I still find myself having with her.

Trevor Van den Eijnden, 
Parrot Pink Vision, Acrylic and Mineral paint on Board, 12"x12"

 

Alongside his collection of floral pieces Trevor provided a grouping of text works following the same theme of grief. 

salves for grief

Trevor Van den Eijnden

Laser-cut birch, assembled text, vanta black, thread, dichroic vinyl, mixed media on panel, framed in aluminum.

Trevor Van den Eijnden, SENU, Mixed Media on Board, 8"x10"

salves for grief is a series of text works that take the ineffable nature of grief through snippets of clarity given physical form. Sourced from journal entries, each short excerpt is chosen for its ability to resonate beyond the artist’s own experiences while also remaining deeply personal to them. The works explore various forms of loss, including personal and collective grief, as well as solastalgia.

 

Trevor Van den Eijnden, YHTT, Mixed Media on Board, 8"x10"

The three–dimensional text undulates across each surface, and is obscured further by the use of vanta black to degrade the articulation of depth, suggesting the way grief can interrupt memory, perception, as well as how we articulate these experiences. The humanist font retains gestures of handwriting, while the randomly askewed letter-forms hint at the manual assemblage of the final works. 

Presented at an intimate scale of 8x10 inches, each work features, in classical recto manuscript conventions, a page and a bookmark. While vanta black is utilized for the pages and text uniformly, each individual piece uses different mixed media for the bookmarks crafting a material contrast. These bookmarks suggest the non-linear process of grieving (an experience filled with interruptions and returns) and mark a place in narrative that remains unfinished, and not fully seen.  

 

Close up detail
Trevor Van den Eijnden, TMTEFA, Mixed Media on Board, 8"x10" 

As the viewer moves, the way light, colour and shadow shifts determines what can be read—an homage to the undulating and unpredictable nature of grief. To read the work is to see in a small offering of physicality of language as both an inadequate means of expressing sorrow and a necessary way of living with it.

Visit us at the gallery to see Trevor's works in person, or follow this link HERE to see the full show.

 Thank you Trevor, for sharing your art and thoughts with us.