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The participants in this group exhibition are:
MY MESSAGE MY 'FEEL GOOD' ART COLLECTION.
Welcome to the world of happiness. A world of beautiful, a world of happy and cheerful. Feel carefree and positive. Go soft and loving in a harsh society full of frustration, lust, greed, jealousy, seduction and struggle. Love soft, as you are deep down. Welcome to the flower power of the twenties!
ME, ALEK| SANDER. My roots lie in advertising where I worked as a concept maker. My creative work was nominated and awarded. Then I became a photographer. My photo work also won many prizes and was shown to the public in various galleries and museums and at photo festivals around the world. As an artist, I – Alek|sander – am at least as ambitious. My aim is to reach a large audience worldwide with a message of happiness. Making as many people as possible happy with my art; That's my mission.
THE POWER OF FLOWER. I've loved flowers all my life. That is why I created an archive that I still supplement daily with new flowers. With these images I now create collages that convey my message of love and happiness. Flowers are able to soften the harsh reality. To 'mask' what is evil. My flowers let you experience the tension between what you see and what you feel.
THE FUTURE OF ‘FEEL GOOD ART’. We live in the middle of the information age. Throughout the day we are kept informed of the events in the world. Whether you like it or not, you can't shut yourself off from it. Attacks in the Middle East, threats in the West, natural disasters in the Orient, life around us is getting darker and darker. The desire grows to dream away and just feel good. And I – Alek|sander – want to give you that with all my feel good (h)art.
After graduating from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 1986, Alexandra Verkerk and other graduates established Ata’nohr, a creative space and community for artists. To this day, Alexandra has remained working in the same studio. Alexandra has produced an extensive oeuvre of artworks using a variety of materials, with an emphasis on oil paintings.
The main theme of her work is the relationship between different spaces and perspectives.
An abstract interpretation of nature, geometry, architecture, interiors and combinations thereof are signature styles in her work. The research of perspective is the main priority, more so than the expression of her refined painting skill.
In recent work, a delicate balance between paint and fabric is realized. The process requires careful planning and consideration. Therefore, the painting blueprint is digitally composed before any paint touches the canvas. This highlights the non-intuitive way of her painting process.
Surreal animal art by visual artist Anneke Bloema
As a kid, I loved drawing and animals and playing outdoors. At home, I was allowed to keep many pets, including a cat, rabbits, guinea pigs, and chickens. I loved to take care of them.
I have an older brother and a younger sister. We’re very close in age. I have fond memories of our imaginative childhood together. We played and fought together as pirates, as princes and princesses, and of course as ourselves.
When I was 18 I took photography as a hobby, soon after enrolling in a course at ‘De Fotovakschool’. Gradually photography became my profession, and in 2001 I founded my own company The Factory II.
I started to do more and more graphic designs like collages. In time I found a way to tell the stories I wanted to tell. After winning an important prize for my illustrations, I was very encouraged to go on. And that’s what I did. Nowadays I spend a lot of time making these collages. Having a very big photo archive of my own allows me to use mostly my own pictures in my storytelling animal artwork.
ANNIGJE (1961) bags is a regular exhibitor at Micksart Collective. It has been more than 10 years since the first bag was created. Somewhere between sleeping and waking up, a clear picture emerged of the bag I was going to make. There are now many ANNIGJE's in use all over the world. The handbags are always unique and are characterized by enthusiastic use of color and stubborn design.
Together with Erik and our team we created the MI&ANN label: Art Jackets.
Together we are creative entrepreneurs and enjoy promoting participating artists.
As a biologist and sculptor, I am inspired by nature, especially by animals, their forms and movement. I use the animals to represent my feelings by choosing a typical attitude and behavior of an animal. Feeling proud as a Peacock, becomes a Peacock showing its beautiful feathers, courting Cranes depict my infatuation.
I make realistic figurative images. It is not my intention to make an exact copy of the animal in its posture. It is my interpretation of the behavior and movement of the animal. I want to represent the animals in such a position that it looks like they are going to move.
The statues are "cire perdu", lost wax, cast by bronze foundry Custers in Grathem. I have developed my own style of modelling with a personal touch on the bronze skin of the statues and my own patin. It is the original traditional way of working that fascinates me in making bronze sculptures. The bronze is a durable robust material that gives the sculpture a timeless character and brings it to life through the patin.
I make my images in series of up to 12 artworks.
I started drawing when I was sixteen. I followed various art courses and later on studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgium, where I specialized in portrait oil painting. After several years I left this classic road and developed a personal style that actually is the opposite of what I was taught. But this new style couldn’t exist without the thorough teaching I went through. It is more a logical development. As a painter I keep learning, which means themes change regularly. I feel very privileged being on this artist path.
In my paintings I use acrylic paint, pastels, oil bars and pencils, and work on canvas or wooden panels. I paint, scratch, draw and repaint again. Underneath my work are lots of layers. It is a time-consuming process. I keep going until I feel the work is balanced. Painting and drawing are both merged in my work, this combination of techniques suits me. A common element in my paintings are the ‘whites’ tones, which if you watch closer, are actually not whites. Underlying colors shine through and give an interesting depth. This way of working gives me an enormous amount of freedom to discover and express myself.
Kuyper paints abstracts in oil on linen, in a hard-edge style.
Each composition is based on shapes “harvested” from earlier work, rearranging themselves, joining other shapes, transforming into new shapes.
Like DNA. The aim is to imitate Nature by working Like Nature, instead of After Nature.
Confrontation with how the randomness of the self-arranging shapes not just leads to chaos, allows the painter to see dragons & sheep in clouds.
After the war, my father founded the Department of Goldsmiths Academy Maastricht. He was very intensively involved in this, at home was also Academy. Holidays in France, those were searches for a small Etruscan figurine or a Luristan bronze, it was about the Euphrates and the Tigris, Mesopotamia and where is for the first time bronze cast and much more.
I often went to the Academy, it smelled like fire and other exciting things, pitch for example. But I didn't want to be an artist, I wanted to do something normal. Things turned out differently, my mother, the stable factor, became ill and died far too young. I went to the Academy from then on, it was too difficult not the goldsmiths, but the people.
After the Academy I didn't work for a long time, I had children (finally something normal). When the children were out the door, I started working in the Bronze foundry Sijen (a pupil of my father). After years of working for other sculptors, I increasingly felt the need to make something for myself again. And now I'm always amazed that I make what I make. There's something tucked in that keeps coming out now. I've watched and seen a lot.
Education: Academy of Fine Arts Maastricht dept. Goldsmiths 1963-1968
Visual artist Christian van Hedel (1974) mainly paints non-figurative abstract art. He has been active as a visual artist for over 20 years now. Christian started out as a self-taught artist, but after attending various workshops he got more and more into it, for example, he followed the fine-art training at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Utrecht (HKU). His work can be found regularly at various art fairs and exhibitions in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Denmark, France, Italy, China, New York and everything in between.
Christian has already won several international audience awards for his works of art. His works are sold worldwide. In a museum in China his work is part of a permanent collection of the museum.
In early 2017, Christian started a brand new project which he called “Fiction Elements”. This new series consists of colorful wall-filling paintings. The works are inspired by the natural and essential spiritual energies of everyday life. Conscious of the unconscious, both opaque and transparent spots, lines, shapes and lines are painted on canvas or on wooden panels. The contrasts between dark and light, colors and black and white always predominate. The shapes are very precisely defined, evoked precisely by the paint matter or created by the idiosyncratic use of brushes or palette knives. Because of the black lines Christian uses in his work, it becomes an abstract comic-like representation that balances the whole. His work tends towards street art or urban art. The works of art are visual concentrations of experiences, dreams and reflections. Autobiographical images, in which Christian tries to broaden the field of perception beyond the purely visual. There’s more to it than you see; art as food for the eye and the mind.
Dijkslag's work is characterized by his graphic working method.
With characteristic clean lines, well-known and lesser-known landscapes and industrial buildings are elevated to special spherical compositions.
Always difficult to tell anything about yourself, but .... I have been designing and producing various home accessories for more than 25 years, such as clocks and mood lamps in my studio in Dronten. In addition to using various production techniques such as flatbed printing, milling, lasering, hot bending, sawing and 3D printing, I also started in 2003 with a long-cherished wish to paint as well. I use acrylic paint on high-quality synthetics.
My drive as a self-taught artist is that I add an extra dimension to everyday objects. For example, a mood lamp is already a beautiful art object during the day, but in the evening it has a completely different look.
In short: functional art made in Holland with the added bonus that every object is UNIQUE!
If you have specific wishes, please let me know.
Of course you can also visit my studio (by appointment).
So let yourself be surprised!
Born in 1987. Contemporary figurative artist creating three-dimensional paintings with her own technique using paper-mache, canvas and oil paint.
The paintings reveal a sculptural vision of form, they surprise with their diversity in terms of structure and message, focusing on showing the aspect of human existence.
The characters in her paintings are static, even rigid, as if frozen in certain poses, thus showing a specific social problem, which is loneliness, limitation, pressure or anonymity. The current subject of the works focuses on issues related to perception and transformation, but above all on empathy and the presentation of various emotional states of a human being. The departure from the traditional range of colors in favor of white allows for perfect accentuation of light and shade. Everything seems to be saturated with symbolic content, the author entrusts her thoughts to the artistic matter and impresses it with her own feelings.
Self-taught Gerard Neijenhuis (Ede, 1966) designs and creates bronze sculptures – sometimes commissioned, preferably according to his own ideas.
"Thinking in images and forms has always been self-evident and natural for me". "It fascinates me most of all how nature shapes everything that lives and doesn't live. From the ridges on the beach to the repetitive cell structures of plants and animals; How are these structures – visible and invisible to the naked eye – constructed?"
"When creating my images, I use a method developed by myself, with which I can create the structures. This was preceded by a period of testing, experimentation and discovery.
I can partially influence the structures, allowing them to retain their natural appearance. I try to capture these structures in tight, stylized, mathematical forms, creating a contrast that brings peace to chaos."
Hazel was born in Amsterdam shortly after her parents migrated there from China. Although she was raised in Holland the Chinese cultural influence on her was huge. Her cultural duality has shaped who she is today, how she sees things and the way in which she expresses herself in photography. Unconsciously the serenity, harmony and imaginary of Chinese art, combined with her awareness of western art have left an impression in her photographic style.
From an early age, she started to play with compact cameras and loved going through her mum’s black and white studio portraits from the sixties. Later she discovered the SLR cameras and found she could play with different objectives, combining apertures and shutter speeds and this opened up a whole new world to her. When the right time came she decided to follow her passion for photography at the Photo Academy in Amsterdam. Her first international exhibition was in 2015 at Arta Gallery, located in Toronto’s historic district, during the most prestigious curated Photo Festival (Contact Photography Festival) in Toronto. As a result of her association with Arta she got in contact with another Toronto Gallery, who also exhibited her work. Following on from this she continues to present her work both in The Netherlands and internationally. She has participated in many other festivals and art fairs including the Affordable Art Fair and was nominated for the ‘Rabo Ontdekt Talent Prijs’. She has also exhibited in Museums such as Hilversum Museum and Museum de Fundatie.
Trained as a ballet dancer, I made my debut as a painter in 1970 through an exhibition in Vlissingen.
Subsequently and in parallel I made a journey through the landscape of art, fashion, design and culture through various entrances: journalism, study (art) psychology, publications, making postgraduate courses for art academies, teaching, giving lectures and through my own school (Livingstonelab).
To finish where and how I started 30 years earlier, as a full-time painter. Occasionally, by the way, I do allow myself a foray into poetry.
Born 1948 in Vries in Drenthe. During my childhood I lived in the north of Friesland.
A lot of drawing and painting from an early age. Encouraged by my father, also a great enthusiast.
I made the professional step to the visual arts along many detours and only later. But it had to come. For about ten years I was a part-time participant at the "Vrije Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten" in The Hague.
I have been living in Haarlem for twenty years now and work in the studio complex "Het Hoofdkantoor" in the Waarderpolder.
My choice of subject is diverse. From portrait, landscape to abstract. But the first interest lies in architecture, urban landscape and industry. With a preference for interior spaces: the play and the coherence of light, space and silence.
The material is predominantly oil on canvas or panel.
I am a member of Pulchri Studio in The Hague and the Vishal in Haarlem.
Jan Verschueren (Belgium 1962) is self-taught. He is a painter and sculptor and has many European solo exhibitions to his name. But he is also a philosopher, it seems, because read his texts and know why.
Jan explains his scrap metal images as follows;
"How rust can be beautiful. How beauty can rust. How construction destruction is. How chaotic structures are. How structural chaos is. How one observes and is observed. How close big ideals are to small sides. How anecdotes seem immortalized. How eternities anesthetize. How humor is. How close black is to white. How close the sculptor is to his sweetheart. How close the sculptor is to his work."
After high school, Jeroen was introduced to jewelry design at the Rietveld Academy during the foundation year. Because he also wanted to carry out these designs himself, he then did the jewelry training in Schoonhoven.
Years ago, he and his wife came into contact with glass art in Leerdam. A visit to a glass gallery there made them fall like a stone for a few unique objects by Floris Meydam. Because Jeroen was fascinated by the glass and wanted to work with it himself, he and his wife started looking for the various techniques to get an idea of what is possible and especially what is not possible with the hot glass.
In the meantime, they had found a nice building in Hoorn where they started their glass art GalerieX.
After attending glassblowing workshops in Leerdam and a flat glass art workshop at Van Tetterode in Amsterdam, Jeroen started designing again. This time in blown and then often ground into the final shape.
In the execution of his pieces, Jeroen has looked for the play of light and color, to which the use of thick glass / crystal is particularly suitable. The shapes are usually organic and due to the use of a lot of clear glass rather heavy. He chooses his colours with care and, if possible, names them on the basis of gemstones.
Nowadays he works a lot with the master glassblower Gert Bulée, who was the master of the glass workshop of Royal Leerdam for many years.
It is the agreements we made with each other and the thoughts we devote to them that make the world look the way it does. We can never know from each other whether the meaning of what we see is the same for everyone. For every person, the word is bound to an appearance. Going back to creation mysticism, it is "The Word That Created."
So what is the meaning of the image? The imitation of the word? Or does the image also exist autonomously?
In my paintings I am looking for the autonomous image. I work from nothing: emptiness, meaninglessness. There is no preconceived plan, no image to work towards. The detachment of the picture. In search of the existence of the 'non-form'.
A transcription for emptiness. Is emptiness flat or multi-dimensional?
In the process, there is no provision about below and above, left or right. It is fighting with matter to reach another layer. Back and forth between austerity and the fire of colors.
The big picture is a timeless 'being'. Created from an accumulation of snapshots that, together, must become timeless/boundless. What should remain is a look into several dimensions at the same time.
I love nature but have a lifelong fascination with trees and water. I think they are mysterious, intriguing and magical, especially the places/trees which were left to grow as they wanted for century’s.
The damaged trees with new branches and the ones that change form because of their environment remind me of human suffering and resilience and for me everything and everybody is connected.
Although I start with the realistic rendering of live my main goal is to find or catch the soul or atmosphere of the object or place.
I love this planet but also fear its destruction, sometimes that fear seeps into my work. But mostly I am hopeful and try to uncover the hidden beauty that surrounds us.
Already in high school it became clear that expressing myself in a creative way would run through my life as a common thread. Drawing was an exam subject in the direction I chose through which the artistic seed was planted. I became curious about all kinds of materials and started the experiment. In the mid-90s I first discovered working with oil paint. From that moment on, that is also the medium in which I prefer to work. For the last ten years I have invariably combined oil paint with ink; two materials that don't really tolerate each other. Ink is in most cases incorporated into the background and prominently present in lines within the composition in the foreground. I feel like I've found a "handwriting". Oil paint, Ink, texture and sharp contours ............ Interwoven into a "Sprengers". I find inspiration mainly within nature and architecture.
For a number of years I have also been making works for "Pakje Kunst". Former cigarette vending machines now contain packs containing a small piece of art instead of cigarettes. How accessible do you want it to be....??
My work has been purchased by individuals and companies. The Municipality of Goirle also has work in its possession. In addition, the paintings can be rented within my small-scale art loan.
John Sprengers (1959) lives and works in Goirle (NB)
In his work, Jozef van den Horst combines his curiosity about the possibilities of neon glass with his Italian sources of inspiration.
Jozef uses a lot of formica in his work. He once started making metal plastics, inspired by the Swiss Tinguely, who made bizarre sculpture machines. At that time, Jozef also made silver jewelry and worked with gas burners to solder silver. From his skill of working with fire and burners arose the link to neon sculptures, for which you first make neon tubes warm and soft in a flame and then bend them. The neon glass blowing ensures that the tube stays round and does not fold in half or become flat.
Jozef: "By fusing different colors of glass together, different combinations are created that I use in my 3Dneon sculptures."
Korneel Jeuken is a visual artist, cartoonist and illustrator.
Under his alias Jøken, he has been making comicart paintings and drawings with a recognizable character for a number of years. The 'Blockheads' that he paints on the most diverse materials depict insane characters but also the need to hide behind a mask as a creature and to take on a new identity. Jøken calls the work 'New Cubism' because he always had a fascination for the movement between the spatial and the flat plane. In his earlier work, this led to abstract paintings and installations that depicted his inner world in an architectural way. In the current work it still plays a role because the figures in his world are often also made up of blocks. Still, he doesn't want to limit himself to blocks. The process of making must remain intuitive. Small sketches that arise in a stream of consciousness form the basis for paintings on wood, cardboard or canvas. Devils, rabbits, kings and skeletons, often dressed in suits and ties, populate the colourful world of Jøken: a seemingly cheerful whole of sleekly designed madness...
Korneel Jeuken (Venray NL 1975) studied at academy St. Joost and the Piet Zwart Institute and exhibited at home and abroad. He draws current cartoons for daily newspaper De Gelderlander
Carolien Bosch is a creative jack-of-all-trades with a great love for fashion and styling. As a child, she dreamed of a future in the creative field. After training at the fashion school, she worked for various international and national fashion brands.
In addition to her passion for fashion, Carolien has been working as a Creative Counselor since 2018. Her company brings together her knowledge, experience and creativity in the field of fashion, styling, sewing and handicrafts and design advice. She is currently making collections for Chan.ge Artwear, among others.
Taxidermy, and specifically the preparation of butterflies and insects, began as a hobby. As a child she was already interested in the wonderful world of butterflies. Over the years, it became a passion in which she can express her creativity, resulting in beautiful works of art. With Madame Butterfly she brings the butterflies back to life in all their beauty; their shapes, their colours and their vulnerability.
On a spiritual level, the butterfly is the symbol of change, freedom, love and transformation of the quality of life. For Carolien, the butterfly symbolizes the full flowering of the spiritual quality of life. She sees it as a privilege that she can work with butterflies and bring their story to life in the form of a work of art.
Margot Olde Loohuis (Albergen, 19 April 1973) graduated in 1997 from the CHK Constantijn Huygens in Kampen (now ArtEZ Zwolle). She has lived and worked in Deventer since 1998.
'As a child, I loved to draw and paint. Essentially, little has changed. Painting gives me a sense of adventure, I enter another world, a different feeling and want to convey that through my paintings. The process and the end result are part of that, but discovery is the most important element.
Since 2007 I mainly paint water in all its aspects. I love the character that is always mobile, reflects, transparent and refracts the light. And when viewed from below the water level, even more emerged. This innovative perspective, showing an often invisible underwater world, the alienation and wonder it brings about, has become an almost philosophical source of inspiration in recent years.
"I can experience art on many levels and ways. Then I look at aesthetics and expressiveness, but also at a special angle. I make contemporary engaged art. It has a certain urgency. It mirrors us, humans and the zeitgeist. Images say more than words and actually appeal very directly to our feelings. My images are a kind of mix of activism and philosophy, they want to engage in dialogue."
I was born in Hoorn (NH) (1970) and have been working as a visual artist since 1994. I am a multidisciplinary artist. My autonomous work areas are divided into painting, collage, installation, digital art, photo manipulation, video art and 3d. I also work on assignment and on a project basis.
Characteristic of my autonomous work is the central role for humans in form and behavior. My work is a reflection of current themes, but the everyday and the personal are also important sources of inspiration. I play with and cross reality. Through small interventions, repetitions, reversals, or breaking through planes with architectural forms, a new image is created in a somewhat familiar image.
Although my work is aesthetic to look at, there is often a kind of unease in it. Abrasive aesthetics. This duality or doubleness is also a recurring fact. Do you see what you see?
The resulting images often straddle the intersection of fiction, realism, graphic and plastic.
Born in 1958 in Amsterdam.
Marten lives in Winschoten between the polders of the Northern Netherlands.
After several years of working on music and conceptual projects, Marten started painting. His inspiration is the enormous vastness of the north and the mudflats. His work shows the silence that you can experience when you are "in the middle of nowhere".
When you stand in "nothingness", with the horizon on all sides, you only feel connected to nature, to the place where you are.
The silence is not limited to your ears.
In addition to painting, Marten is a filmmaker of documentary and feature films. In his films he also shows the peace that you can experience when everything goes slower, which is quieter.
After the Graphic School and 1 year Rietveld Academy I started painting with oil paint and followed several courses in lithography (stone printing). I switched to drawing and mono prints because I get along better with this material. Since 2005 I also make drypoint etchings.
My work is illustrative and animals (with human traits) play an important role in this.
Fantasy and humor are important to me and with every work I give the viewer the opportunity to come up with his own story.
After the Graphic School and 1 year Rietveld Academy I started painting with oil paint and followed several courses in lithography (stone printing). I switched to drawing and mono prints because I get along better with this material. Since 2005 I also make drypoint etchings.
My work is illustrative and animals (with human traits) play an important role in this.
Fantasy and humor are important to me and with every work I give the viewer the opportunity to come up with his own story.
Mots Kocic, born and raised in Yugoslavia, now Croatia....Worked with great passion as a furniture maker, as most furniture makers are... Now free to spend his free time on what he really likes: creating utensils made of wood with a special design... His works are characterized by the idea that such a thing has never been made or seen before...
He has exhibited at various exhibitions in Steenwijkerland ("If you like wood", "Zevensprong", etc). One of his colourful chests of drawers has been donated to the Isala hospital, children's ward.....
In 2019 he participated in the "Summer Expo 2019"..... This is the country's largest art sales exhibition.... The exhibition attracted 78,000 visitors, there were many enthusiastic reactions and a quarter of the works were sold. Mots' chest of drawers has been at the Fundatie Zwolle for 3 months... and received many rave reviews....
Continue as long as possible to be able to make beautiful things, in complete freedom, is his motto!
In her work Marianne van den Berg depicts the human being, not the exact representation, but the recognition she evokes.
Her images are powerful and vulnerable at the same time.
Because of her intuitive way of working, she has developed a pure and very own style.
The French artist Ortaire de Coupigny nowadays gets most sardine cans directly from a cannery. So that he does not have to empty all the cans himself before turning them into a work of art and almost turning him into a 'fish' himself.
The fish are made of wax and painted with different materials. For example, the black of the fish is used carbon pigments.
When the fish are ready, they go in the can on a layer of wax. Two types of resin are then poured on it. The first is an epoxy that ensures that the wax is not damaged and the second layer a polyester that gives a smooth result. The tab to open the cans serves as a hanging system at the back.
Born in Amsterdam, moving to Calgary, Canada in my early teens, where I was welcomed by the overwhelming nature. The breathtaking Rocky Mountains, and lakes as big as oceans! A few years later while living in Vancouver, British Columbia these feelings of awe and reverence became further intensified and focused living and breathing as I did among the incredible abundance of nature all around. In particular, the sheer energy and strength of color and form in their ever-changing combinations, became a focal point.
Years later I returned back to the Netherlands and brought back these powerful and intense emotions locked up inside of me.
After having met Willem van Oijen from Bevo glass studio, a period of drawing and painting ensued, liberating and interpreting all these so treasured stored images and thoughts.
Working with a kiln one day " fired" the interest in fusing colored glass. This technique enabled me to express into form, the impressions and expressions of the sensation of fusing colors and shapes in various combinations, as it happens naturally in nature all the time.
But for several years now I am drawn to making sculptures in cire perdue. Making a clay or wax model, the various molds that have to be made before the actual firing and preparing of the kiln. The suspense, the waiting period before the piece can be taking out of the kiln, the 3 dimentionality of the pieces, the directness, strength and radiance are both spectacular as exciting for me.
The aspect of applying color has not changed. What has changed though is the subject and the background thought that I depicted herein are on a different plane. The changing and hardening society and the indifference which one presents itself is striking.
In my works I try to create a setting with a “twist” in which I portray situations confronting the beholder with these issues.
The work of Romy van Rijckevorsel is daring, colorful, very inviting for personal interpretations and not without obligation!
Romy paints in an eclectic way. In her work you see many references to classical artists. (e.g. Gustav Klimt, decorative backgrounds, but also Egon Schiele). It is also eclectic because of its different styles: drawing, graffiti, painting and graphic elements. All these elements are very successfully combined into an organic whole in which your own handwriting is also lurking. That's very clever, because the combination of references and styles can also go wrong very quickly. In Romy's work, however, she stops at just the right time.
The paintings are very postmodern in the sense of "anything is possible" and yet it is not at all restless. On the one hand, the works are very decorative and on the other hand also harsh and almost provocative and vulgar. Nevertheless, they are balanced, partly due to the strong composition. (Jury report Painting of the year 2020, eventually ranked 9th out of 1250 applications).
Ruben Koerhuis (1959) has always been concerned with images. First as a maker of (commission) videos and photographer, in which he was used to filling in a fixed frame. The 'why' of that image, as a conscious part of a larger whole, was always central to this. This is reflected in the current work: abstract images with a personal story. No work is a coincidence and it is never just form. With a successful image, there is a balance between the narrative, the emotion, the craft, the continuity and growth within a theme and the lasting wonder through discovery and invention. Recurring elements, such as lead, copper and slate, or the sphere and the circle, are used as a theme and storyteller and give shape to basic desires or (primary) feelings. As if it were the stillness of moments from the maker's life. Work with a purpose. Still, they have generic titles. This is so as not to push the viewer in a particular viewing direction. For the creator it is finished, for the new viewer it starts with the first look, where the origin does not matter. Although it is also no secret: if asked, one will of course receive an explanation.
For me, painting is how life presents itself, how I walk past things and what comes my way.
The positive in life is very important to me. Yet sometimes you can't escape the fact that less fun things come your way. This is invariably followed by a translation on a canvas.
Being positive in life, I get a lot of energy from that.
The rural area in which I live provides a lot of inspiration. Here I can really enjoy the silence. A powerful piece of music also fits in at certain moments.
I feel like a super rich person, that I can be busy with that!
After a process of experimenting with different styles and techniques, Sophia has developed her own style. Her paintings are characterized by powerful compositions, in which each surface gets its own color and these are demarcated with lines at the last moment. Through the use of lines, the work is abstracted, as it were. In some works, the lines become lighter in color to give the work more depth. Light and dark are omitted to stay with the simplicity of the theme.
The themes in her works are nowadays depicted almost realistically. In her current work, colors are increasingly mixed. During the painting process, Sophia seeks a balance in her compositions, background and use of color. Colors are brought together by emotion. Through her color palette, she creates her own reality in which recognition remains.
She finds inspiration in life. It starts with watching. Looking is different from seeing. Inspiration can be a snapshot, a hunch, seeing highly simplified forms of a city or in nature, a shimmer of water or, for example, a beautiful color. Inspiration can be found around you. The difference between looking and seeing gives the process movement and leads to the formation of ideas and images in her own colorful language.
“My work is a product of my imagination. I just have to create.”
Steffie de Leeuw is a Dutch artist, designer who lives and works in Amsterdam. After graduating from the University of Amsterdam and the ‘Willem de Kooning’ Art Academy in Rotterdam, Steffie started working in Art, creating oil paintings. Born with a creative background Art has been taught to Steffie from an early age. Her father was a great admirer of art, a huge music lover and a gifted amateur painter and sculptor himself. Her mother, taught her how to appreciate fashion and creating things with fabrics. At the age of ten Steffie was making her own schoolbag on the sewing machine. In her teenage years she was taking pieces of clothing out of her mother and grandmothers wardrobe cutting and sewing them into unique pieces.
She also inherited her love for travel from her parents, as well as her love for nature and wild life. Her surname is de Leeuw (the Lion) and you see these animal and other felines frequently in her work and designs.
In 2000 Steffie graduated from the ‘Willem de Kooning’ Art Academy. In addition to creating numerous art works, Steffie has since produced commissioned work for several well-known retail brands. In 2016 the brand Steffie de Leeuw launched in Amsterdam. Steffie de Leeuw only produces on first-class materials, always trying to minimize the impact on the environment.
Steffie de Leeuw creates art that appeals to the imagination, which everyone can enjoy indefinitely.
Theo Schildkamp: 'I paint what is possible, but not likely'
After obtaining his gymnasium diploma, Theo Schildkamp studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Arnhem. He then established himself as a professional illustrator and designer.
Apeldoorner by birth and raised in the middle of first the Veluwe and later the Twente forests, Theo has a strong connection with nature, which has therefore been one of the main sources of inspiration for his work. Plants, animals and landscapes were invariably the subject of his watercolours and drawings. Nevertheless, in 2001 he left the Netherlands to settle in the French Gard Provençal. About ten years ago, after a successful and productive career, he began to focus more and more on 'free' painting. He freed himself from the wishes and requirements of clients and opted for a very personal style and theme. Nature continued to play a role in his work, but it was the female figure who was given the most prominent place in it.
In 2021, Theo and his wife moved back to the Netherlands permanently. In his Diepenheim studio, but from July 2022 Boekelose studio, Theo paints canvases that are mainly exhibited internationally. In Sedona, Arizona USA, he has a permanent exhibition.
is self-taught and from his first exhibition called Trash & Treasure in 1997 he has continuously worked on his own style. He is very involved in nature and the environment and therein lies the reason that he started to make his art from things and material that has been thrown away or discarded and still does so to this day.
In addition to creating sculptures and installations, he also designs various fashion accessories such as spectacular crowns, sunglasses from meccano and various designer handbags with LED lighting. He has won awards at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010, 2011 and 2012.
The feminine forms are also reflected in his work in all kinds of ways, for example the well-known zippers women in different colors and poses and the metal bodies.
In addition, the angel wings are an important part of his work. They are made of metal, synthetics, glass and light. Tinus always finds a new way to achieve a perfect whole with different techniques.
Yann Schuyers (Oss, 1954) discovered the artist in himself early in his life. As a child he provided hand-drawn illustrations for the school newspaper. Because of his creative mind, Yann soon became interested in photography, and he made shapes in aerated concrete and even cow bones.
"Shapes and colours have challenged me from an early age. For as long as I can remember, I feel the need to make something beautiful, I want to tell stories. Not with words, but with images. I want other people to enjoy my imagination. That's always been my drive. And still do." – Yann Schuyers
Over the years, Yann has immersed himself in a multitude of creative working methods that give him the opportunity to work with form and imagination. Full of interest and enthusiasm, he has been involved in photography, screen printing, drawing and painting with pencil and acrylic paint, digital art and designing gardens and furniture. Yann was also happy to pass on his expertise and enthusiasm to students of the Vrije Academie.
As an image artist, Yann enjoys constantly trying out and applying new techniques and materials. And just like his tastes and interests, his work continues to evolve. He is still fascinated by the work of great predecessors such as Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt van Rijn. At the same time, he is triggered by contemporaries and draws inspiration from architecture, design and fashion. But transcending everything is the inspiring inspiration he draws from the beauty of the woman and the female body.
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