The Poetry of Memory, Emotion, and Transformation

Your work moves between memory, emotion, and silence, inviting viewers to form their own associations. What led you to move away from figurative painting and develop what you describe as an “evocative abstraction”?

I spent many years using art to satisfy my obsession with human behaviour - in particular our strengths and vulnerabilities as we go about our daily lives. Then personal tragedy drove me to turn my focus inwards … toward my own emotions. Significantly, this change of focus catalysed a transition from a figurative modern realism style to abstract. Abstract was, put simply, the only way to truly express my ideas and emotions on canvas. I became driven by ideas of transience and impermanence ... mortality, eternity ... the awareness of generational threads that may bind or may break ... how memories may be recalled and how memories may be erased.

You have lived and worked in different countries and cultural environments. How have these experiences shaped your artistic language and the emotional atmosphere of your work?

I started painting when I lived in the Netherlands - you could say that the palettes used in my, then, figurative works reflected the north European climate and tended to be somber. 

When I moved to the US, it was the the time that people were building their “desired” personal profiles Facebook - people portrayed their lives as ideal and the inherent contradictions in that drove me to adopt a modern realist style for collections called “The Factory” and “Catachreza” - exploring artificial happiness and contradictions in the human condition at the time. Of course, this was not only happening in the USA but being there I think amplified the effect it had on me. Living in New Jersey with its extremes of cold snow in the winter and heat in the summer, its extensive green woods and massive conurbations were reflected in the more eclectic palette I adopted there.

Then Italy, aaah Italy. I lived on the very top of a hilltop town. A town where the people were kind, friendly, with a simple sophistication, and always “tranquilla” (calm). I had a terrace that overlooked the valley with a view to the distant mountains. The colours, the light, the hazy morning air. I spent a long time working on paper, trying to capture my feelings as they appeared reflected in the colours and the changing landscapes I saw each morning. Then came Covid and I was so fortunate to be trapped in the most perfect place for me at that time. That’s when evocative abstract took form with the collection “Written in the Sand” … the title reflecting the transitoriness I mentioned earlier.

Now, back to the Netherlands. I keep moving - just as in life, in my work I have a drive to keep moving and developing and searching. In Friesland, there are no mountains but there are horizons, and skies, and a distance that could go on forever. That is what you can see in my current series on show in Berlin and called “The Weight of Air”

Themes such as transience, memory, and the fleeting nature of human experience play a central role in your practice. What do these themes mean to you personally, and how do they find their way into your paintings?

This moment is different from any other moment. The present is gone - it immediately becomes the past. We can only know the past … but we, I, can dream of the future. In previous collections, I often focus on the transitoriness and contradictions in how people, and me in particular, have viewed a past or on-going event. My last collection Cocoons was about being in the present moment … a place to rest, to be and to transform/evolve into new being. And now with “The Weight of Air” I seem to be looking into the far, far distance which is in many ways the future.