Sjoerd Buisman was trained at the Art Academy of Rotterdam, and at Ateliers 63, Haarlem. He works in Amsterdam and Normandy.
Nature, and more in particular plant structure, plays a dominant role in all his work. He was one of the first artists that worked with living material. Fascinated by deformities in plants found in nature, and which he presented as objects trouvés, he deliberately induced contorted plant growth by e.g. strapping budding pumpkins, and by changing the direction in which growing plants were subjected to light or gravity. Still later he concentrated on orderly patterns seen in growing plants: phyllotaxis or leaf arrangement, with a clear preference for the amazing spiral patterns in which leaves of many plant species unfurl.
His Ouroboros (never-ending spirals) works made up of branches of e.g. Eglantine and Silphium and his “Babel” works stem from the phyllotaxis, but also refer to archetypical symbols of growth and decay. His most recent work is often more playful, yet linked to phyllotaxis. All Buisman’s work, including his drawings, has a strongly sculptural character.
Work by Buisman is in numerous private and public collections, e.g. in Museum Boymans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Municupal Mueum of The Hague, Museum Kröller Müller, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and museums in Belgium, Germany, France, Poland and Switzerland.