I work in layers, where layered painting and emotion are closely connected. Not to build an image towards an endpoint, but to allow space to emerge.
Each layer carries something within it. A movement, a hesitation, a direction. At times something becomes visible, at other times it disappears beneath a new gesture. What remains, what withdraws, and what slowly comes forward, that is where meaning begins for me.
What is layered painting?
Layered painting is a way of working in which an image develops through successive layers.
These layers are not only technical. They carry time. They reveal that an image does not arise in a single moment, but grows, shifts, and continuously relates to what is already present.
Emotion in layers
Emotion, for me, does not lie on the surface. It emerges within the process. Within this process, layered painting and emotion cannot be separated.
In working over an image, in allowing something unresolved to remain, in intervening when something becomes too quickly clear. A layer can intensify, but also soften. At times an intervention brings the image closer, at others it creates distance.
It is a search for tension. Not for resolution.
What becomes visible, and what does not
In a layered work, not everything is meant to be seen.
Some elements remain beneath the surface. They carry the image without fully revealing themselves. Others come forward, sometimes unexpectedly.
This interplay, between what is visible and what remains concealed, allows the work to keep moving, even when it hangs still.
Time within the image
Layers make time visible.
Not as a linear narrative, but as an accumulation of moments. Every decision remains present somewhere. Sometimes as a trace, sometimes as resistance, sometimes as something that is barely recognisable.
For me, that is essential. The work does not need to feel “finished.” It may show that it has moved through something. And the friction that arises within that process may remain visible.
Intuition and intervention
Within this process, I move between letting go and directing.
There are moments in which I follow what emerges. And moments in which I intervene, because something is not yet right, becomes too quickly visible, or remains too closed.
Intuition plays a central role. Not as something random, but as something rooted in experience, attention, and the act of working itself.
Within my way of working
This way of working is closely connected to material and gesture. The way a layer is applied, how a movement repeats or is interrupted, all of this shapes what can come into being.
More about how material and gesture function within my process can be found on the page about material and gesture.
And how forms and images ultimately develop into meaning within my work is brought together on the page about symbols and narrative.
Positioning
Within my work, layering is not a technique, but a way of seeing.
I am not concerned with fixing an image, but with opening a space in which something can emerge. In layers, in time, and in the encounter with the viewer.
This forms an essential part of my position as a contemporary Dutch female artist, where process, image and meaning remain in constant movement.
