✨ Art talk during the vernissage at Galerie De Pomp, Warmond – August 2025 ✨
In this video, I take you back to the opening of my exhibition. I talk about the different series I’ve created over the past years: how they came to life, the sources of inspiration behind them, and how my work has evolved into narrative sequences.
I brought several series, because I always work in smaller series. And that’s very much related to what I myself experience, what I see happening with others, and what’s going on in society. So for me, it’s really about “feeling.” It may sound a little strange, but it’s about the energies that are present in that moment.
Often a certain memory surfaces, one that I wasn’t consciously aware of at that time. But as I said, it’s really about the feeling. Maybe it’s useful if I briefly tell you about a few of the series that are hanging here. Although I always think it’s also beautiful to hear what others feel when they look at them.
anthropomorphic figures
Here I have a series with what we might call anthropomorphic figures. Does anyone know what that means? I immediately feel the teacher in me coming up. Anthropomorphic figures are animal figures that can have human traits. Or that actually do have human traits—just think of fables. And years ago I made a bunch of sketches of female figures with a hare. And the hare was always this little character, and you can also see it there on that painting: a female figure with a hare. Drasper the Hare—that was a character my father always told bedtime stories about. I must have been about ten or twelve at the time. And Sonja, who is standing here, also comes from Noordwijkerhout. We lived close to the dunes. My father grew up in the dunes and he had these wonderful, self-invented fables about Drasper the Hare.
those stories
Drasper the Hare could always solve everything with cleverness and resourcefulness. I thought that was magnificent of course, because I was a little girl and not the strongest, but I found it so inspiring. And when I was around forty, those stories resurfaced. I started making sketches of a woman with a little hare doll, dragging it along.
“It always comes down to the feeling and the dynamics.”
Hare and Deer
And gradually that hare transformed into a sturdy, tough hare. But strangely enough, that wasn’t enough for me, because then came the deer—and the deer was even tougher and stronger. Because in my imagination, it proudly stands shining on top of a beautiful dune.
And yes, so the deer actually took the place of the hare. Quite masculine, strong, solid. And secretly I think that was also a reflection of me realizing that I myself am actually enormously strong and grounded, and that came to the surface. In mixed media too—I shifted from oil paint to mixed media.
The process
And yes, made very much from my feelings. And I must honestly say, only later I realized why I had chosen a deer. So it’s not that I think, oh, let me just come up with something different. It emerges, while doing, during the whole process. This is actually just a small example of how I work.
The dynamics
And here I have a completely different series, also with a lot of movement, again combining softness, sweetness, with the motion, the dynamics of myself and my own handwriting. And this is the series Sneaky Hidden Sunflowers. That one actually started because I thought, hey, I’ll take part in a themed exhibition with other artists.
no longer about pure realism
And the theme was “sunflowers.” I thought, well, what am I supposed to do with sunflowers? Beautiful flowers, of course. Then I was in Italy, and I saw a sunflower field in a lovely valley with a little house. And I thought, yes, that’s it, that’s what I’ll work on. I spent weeks in a row, I made many more of them, painting that same scene day after day—constantly trying to make it my own. And then one day I looked at it and suddenly thought: hey! where have the sunflowers gone? For me it had become more about the movement of the landscape, the light. I was still searching for the focus of that yellow field, but it was no longer about pure realism or just about the sunflowers.
narrative themes
And that’s why the title is Sneaky Hidden Sunflowers. Yes, in the end they forgot me at the exhibition. I have many more series, all with their own personal, narrative themes. It always comes down to the feeling and the dynamics.
