Artist Statement

I’m standing in the Guggenheim in New York, breathless looking around. Completely overtaken by it’s volume. The space turns around me, and I move along with it; rising, playing with form, colour and daylight. What had looked like a white snail from the outside, nestled within the skyline, feels inside like a space that contains everything. I’m eleven years old, and I never imagined I would become an artist; and yet something began there that I would only recognize much later.

During that same trip I visited the MoMA. There, unconsciously, I searched for what lay behind the artworks; for the space that wasn’t immediately visible. Years later, when I viewed the Night Watch from the side, I realized what I had been looking for: to me it was a living painting, one I could stand right in the middle of. Ever since, I look at paintings not only from the front, but also from the side.

As a child I spent my pocket money on coloured pencils, searching for that one shade that caught my eye. The colour on paper often disappointed me; it lacked the clarity I expected. That became the beginning of my exploration of colour, of what I call “elevating colours”: colours that lift each other, that vibrate, enhance one another or stand on their own. Colour is healing for me, back then and still now.

In glass, all my experiences come together. Glass hides nothing: the lines, the colours you can experience in transparency, the layering and the reflection along the edge. It engages in a game with daylight, changing from day to day. Glass invites you to approach my painting-objects differently. Objects that ask you to walk around them, to experience the work in its mirror image.

Each piece is a fragment of a larger whole. Sometimes you see only part of it, sometimes a complete form. Their titles speak to their essence, and together they shape my artistic practice. With a minimum of lines, I capture space and movement.

I am not asking the viewer to understand, but simply to pause in that single moment where perspective shifts and art continues. An insight that arose in the Guggenheim and alongside the Night Watch.

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Inspiration

Every day is different, not a single one is the same. It’s all part of nature and that’s what fascinates me. It is my way of living, inspired not only by painters, but also philosophers, musicians, architects and other artists with whom I collaborate.

Michelangelo for his translation of the David, and his strong spiritual connection. 

Rembrandt for his humor and his use of light in that time already, with all the hidden secrets.

Van Gogh for his longing and need to paint, his love for nature and his way of painting movement with one straight line. 

Frank Lloyd Wright for the Guggenheim museum New York. Which is my favourite building in the world.

Kandinsky inspires me with his round graphic forms, his colours and his philosophy on art.

Etty Hillesum for her longing to be as transparant as possible. To live through all facets of life, to get to know herself and humanity in an exceptional way.