Pioneer

Artist Statement Pioneer

My work encompasses photography, film, sculptures, drawings and installations. I conceptualize emotional experience to intertwine the personal with the universal.
In other words: I look for the personal in the bigger picture.
I have been an artist all my life. I guess it is all I know; reflecting a state of being, of being here, alive.

I was born and raised in Amsterdam, studied at the Rietveld Academy and the Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten, followed by filmstudies in the USA. I lived in Antwerp, Ireland and the USA. My work has been shown internationally and is part of Dutch and Italian art collections. 

Since 2014 I have been living in Sweden. The deep contrasts and the silence of the nordic landscape have had a profound effect on my work. In the body of work made between 2015 and now, the ‘color’ white is a central and independent entity, indicating a state of mourning and a deep sense of transience after the loss of my brother in 2014.

The title work for this book is the self portrait “Pioneer”. It calls forth a strong and heroic image, yet the work itself shows a vulnerable woman, hurdled in blankets and carrying a fragile stick, with a clumsy balloon attached to it. But the stick is the stem of a young birch tree, in the northern hemisphere also known as the Pioneer Tree. It is the first tree to reappear after disaster, like a fire or severe woodcutting. Using the birch as a pole, the woman carries her balloon like a luminous orb; Vulnerable, cold, and determined.