Category: Painting

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Painting

The Little Mermaid

The Little Mermaid and her choices...

The classic fairytale by Hans Christiaan Andersen is the guiding principle for a series of paintings I am working on. The tragedy of her being a creature without much power to choose the life that she desires gives her little self-love. Using works from art history, I hilight emancipatory issues that are in the story.

She traded her voice for a pair of legs     2019 

acrylics on canvas, 100 x 100 cm

The painting shows the Little Mermaid after her visit to the Sea Witch. She is left in a lonely environment. The light emphasizes her new legs, where there used to be a fish tail. The road to a possible life with the Prince. For this she paid with her voice, an essential part of the being of a mermaid. She will never again be able to tell her Prince and the world who she is …
“She traded her voice for a pair of legs” is after Rembrandt’s “The Bather”.


The sea that once was her home is about to swallow the Little Mermaid, who is turning into foam. This is the consequence of the Prince loving someone else more then her. She could have saved herself by stabbing a dagger in his heart on the night of his marriage. But she loved him more than her own life and threw herself into the sea. Knowing that she would ultimately dissolve into it…
“She would rather turn to foam than kill him” is after “Ophelia” by John Everett Millais.

She would rather turn to foam than kill him     2020

acrylics on canvas, 100 x 100 cm

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Painting

The blue sky

Here is the world as we want to see it, pleasant and beautiful. Everything is good, the air is clear, the water is fresh and there is yellow-golden sunlight. But, below the surface is that which we would rather not see. The being in the water is asphyxiated.

Swimming and hunting, like sharks with a human body, we come across our own poison.

 

The blue sky was created for an exhibition with the theme “Breath of Life”. This is a pentecostal theme, referring to the insufflation of life. The work was on show in a new visitorscenter at Sophiapolder, a small island in the river Noord, in a tidal area .
A strange paradox of omnipresent nature in a cultivated, industrial area.

Acrylics are used as matt as possible, without medium, with gesso, zinc- and titaniumwhite. The yellow is partly oilpaint. This makes the sunlight the most intense colour in the painting.

The blue sky   2018  
acrylics & oil on canvas, 200 x 200 cm

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Painting

Cormorant-fish

Part of the project “Every little bird sings as it is prized” from Het Vogelnest (Birdsnest, community initiative) for “400 years Synod of Dordrecht“.

Cormorant-fish, ode to Jacob Cats    2018
Mural in “Cormorant”street (Aalscholverstraat)
Trimetal Globaxane paint, 1177 x 930  cm

The Cormorant fish is a reference to the emblemata of Jacob Cats. This singing cormorant also has a fish tail, which refers to the ancient ties of the people of Dordrecht with the water.

It makes the tail into a kind of nest, in which the little chicks, drawn by the children of the Bird-district are sitting.

After the start of the Synod of Dordrecht in 1618 a comet was seen in the sky. Poet Jacob Cats (1577-1660) saw in this not an ominous messenger in turbulent times, as was the prevailing view of comets. According to him, it was a divine sign that disputes could be resolved in a new light.

This emblema tells us everyone has a place in a community. We all have a different background, with many similarities.

Chicks made by the neighbourhood kids
WebAsli
WebNada
WebMare
WebJulia
WebJo-enna
WebGeisha
WebFilip
WebCas
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Painting

The Origin – stardust everywhere

The Origin - stardust everywhere

The universe is made of stardust. It fills our oceans with billions of water droplets. This water is life. It connects us with the beginning of time. 

Stardust is the matter that we are. The heart is the immaterial wisdom that we are one.

 

The Origin – stardust everywhere 
2018  
acrylics on wooden bench 90 x 150 cm 

This work is one of the artworks in THE HEARTPARADE for the Energy4All foundation, an exhibition to help children with mitochondrial disease. 

The HeArtparade hasbeen on display at art and design fairs in 2018 and 2019,  and resulted in an auction evening in the fall of 2019.

National Artdays, november 2018 Nieuwegein

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Painting

Two golden weeks in Rockanje

The results of breathing space … 

With the easel and cart through the dunes to the beach. After a few meager years I finally went on summer holidays, 
on forty minutes away from my house.
Sunny weather in Rockanje, and also some rain. The sea is almost always quiet. Blue skies, lots of sand and sand-coloured things of course, brown slab at low tide.

Two golden weeks in Rockanje    series   2017
acrylics & goldfinger on canvas, 40 x 40 cm x 8

I went to the beach at different moments, early in the morning, evening, afternoon and at night. Several hours of painting before the tide could flush away my stuff and also the view had changed.

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Painting

Floating

The beginning of everything is floating in space, in the ocean, in the womb, in our mother’s arms…
Everything is connected through space and the rhythms of time.

Floating 

2016  
acrylics & oil on canvas, 90 x 90 cm 

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Painting

Three-riverspoint

18 august

Different weather, different light, different movements.  “Drie Rivierenpunt” is a series of 6 paintings of the same spot in the water where the three major rivers Beneden Merwede, Oude Maas and Noord converge, painted at intervals of one week. 

It has sprung from a mountain somewhere in Switzerland, travelled along villages and cities, castles, factories.
This spot has seen flourishing trade, the gallows on the shore, the arrival of the king, the annual fireworks…

This river is always grayish green, with a bit yellow and blue sometimes. I painted it as mat as possible, using tap water and river water, and no other medium to prevent any glossiness.

Three-riverspoint     series    2013 

acrylics on canvas, 80 x 80 cm each

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Painting

Riverwater

Special water. It has been flowing for centuries, connecting the history of different era’s. Water, coloured and shaped by time and the weather of that paricular day …

Riverwater 12th august    2013 
acrylics on canvas 80 x 140 cm