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Growing up on a farm, much of her work reflects on her connection to nature. DeDecker manipulates her clay with a painterly style leaving brush marks over the surface to emulate movement and fluidity. A reflection of her potential influences, The Sower evokes the work of important artists from two very different periods and movements: Vincent Van Gogh and Italian Futurists, such as Umberto Boccioni. Like DeDecker, Van Gogh was inspired by the rhythmic cycles and honorable traditions of agricultural life, and thus employed a farmer spreading seeds as a subject in multiple works. The sowers in DeDecker’s and Van Gogh’s works are frozen in this distinctive action, which has become a rather iconic pose. While the surface of DeDecker’s sculptures mirrors the brushwork of Van Gogh’s paintings, the texture evokes a sense of suspended motion. The Italian Futurists were obsessed with the modern technology and mechanisms developing with speed during the early twentieth century. In an attempt to capture the dynamism of a body in motion, Boccioni sculpted human forms as if the full range of their movement was captured in a solid blur. DeDecker similarly uses the solid materials of her sculpture to depict the body of The Sower as if his clothes are blowing in the breeze or shifting with his efforts, leaving a fluid trail of his actions.