stairway to....bed?

In the house we live there are really small stairs that go to the second floor, where my studio and the bedrooms are. It's not a space where you can do much: to small for paintings and to high to hang something beautiful. So about a year ago we thought we make some kind of artwork in it. We found a nice branch to hang all kind of stuff in it. Old works of me and my dad got a new purpose! My dad even "destroyed" some of his old drawings to make a new work as a background for the branch. We put some lights in it which makes is look a little bit like christmas, perfect for this time of the year! (but it also looks great in the summer!)
In the picture below you can see how the stairs go up, to put all of this in perspective...

nothing personal

A few days ago I watched the movie "nothing personal" by Urszula Antoniak. I think that this movie has some really strong images/stills in it. Especially the one I try to draw in the picture above. But you probably have to know what happens in this scene... (you will have to see it).

The movie is about Anne, she is alone in her empty flat, from her window she observes the people passing by who nervously snatch up the personal belongings and pieces of furniture she has put out on the pavement. Her final gesture of taking a ring off her finger signals she is leaving her previous life in Holland behind. She goes to Ireland, where she chooses to lead a solitary, wandering existence, striding through the austere landscapes of Connemara. During her travels, she discovers a house that is home to a hermit, Martin.
He proposes her to work for him in exchange of food. She agrees but on one condition: there will be no personal contact between them, just work. Soon the two of them become curious about each other and want both: to keep their 'nothing personal' deal and to break it. He knows that breaking the deal and becoming personal may result in her leaving the house. For her, showing any interest in him will equal compromising her radical freedom, which she defines as staying alone and refusing contact with people. 

Below a picture of the original film poster and also the still I tried to draw...

self-made wrapping paper

The christmas-gifts my dad gave me were no surprise: I picked them out myself. So I knew what he was going to give to me. But he still wanted it to be special, so he made his own wrapping paper, based on the content of the gift. I picked out a book of Tracey Emin (I think her art is great!), so the picture above shows the wrapping paper based on the art of Tracey Emin!

He didn't know the content of this book, so he drew me reading and the title is: "a book".

This way it was still special to me, because he had a lot of work making it. It was a big surprise to see all the drawings!

gingerbread-house

This year I made a gingerbread-house! As I finished it I thought by myself: the house needs an environment, it looks so empty and lonely. So  it became a big project! So now it has woods, and rabbits and all kind of figures and of course a bad witch inside the house! It ended up to be a lot of work, but it was fun to do.
I hope you all have a nice christmas and don`t eat to much of everything!

we can settle by the sea

I'm still sketching! Especially with the busy times around christmas (I only have to buy 3 more gifts!), I don't have the time, or the calm, to start a new painting. And I have a problem with new ideas: if I can't  translate my ideas directly (or at least within a week...) into action, I don't want to paint them anymore. If they are that long in my mind, I've painted them a thousend times in my fantasy, I don't have to in real life, it's not interesting anymore. This way a lot of my ideas have never been produced.

dutch winter wonder land

First of all: I love snow! And here in the Netherlands we don`t have a lot of it. Wenn I was young, we used to have winters with a lot of snow, the way a winter should be. For the last 3 or 4 years the winters become colder again and this year it's snowing since the end of november. ( I hear all the people from Scandinavia or Canada laugh...) All there is in the news is the weather and the snow and the ice. The traffic is a disaster, no trains, plains or automobiles! The dutch don't know how to handle snow anymore!
Anyway, I was in our garden today to take pictures of the beautiful landscape we have here in the south. The first photo is the view you have if you sit on the seat in the second picture, which is a part of our garden. And then of course my rabbit Pollock, he doesn't seem to mind the snow!

instantly more pretty

This sculpture used to be just a concrete, weird thing. It had the colour of a sick salmon. A friend of my mum gave it to her and after a couple of years I thought: this thing needs paint! And I saw all these figures in it. So I had two days of fun painting it and now it has a nice place in the house!
It's about 60 cm high and the photo below shows the entire sculpture.

all funny in the eye

This is my painting "all funny in the eye". You can find this one and five other paintings on the website of artolive. It's the biggest online gallery of the Netherlands. You can find more then 45.000 pieces of art, made by more then 30.000 artists.... Paintings, sculptures, photo's, digital art, you name it and you can find it here. And the best thing is that you can also rent the pieces. As an artist you decide if you want to sell your art, rent or do both things. If people rent your work they have 6 months time to decide if they want to buy your work or rent something else. Off course they also have to pay for the work if they just rent it. But I still feels weird if one of my paintings is rented, I always hope they are okay...

sleeping beauty and ...what?

Did some sketching again. I avoid drawing faces, because I find them difficult to draw. But it just needs practice, as everything. So the sleeping one turns out all right, but the other woman...well, not so okay. I tried to draw a woman with a lot off wrinkles, but now it just looks weird.

poor princess in the snow

I found this concrete, garden sculpture between the leaves as we moved in this house. Very kitschy... So I made it a little bit more kitschy with a tattoo on her back to compleet the whole thing. She is standing there for almost three years now and at the moment she looks a bit cold. I wonder how long the paint is going to last...

artist's secret

Here's a little secret about how I create the backgrounds in my paintings: I use these old-fashioned, white curtains as a stencil. (look at the background of the painting in the post below). Meanwhile I have a big collection of curtains. Everytime I'm at a market I see if I can find some more....it's like a addiction.
And two days ago I thought that my curtains in the kitchen are realy boring and that I should change them. So why not some of my old-fashioned curtains? I airbrushed them to change the colour, some red and purple for christmas and in the spring I paint some curtains green en yellow!

frozen in the headlights

One of my older paintings (I think I painted it somewhere in May of this year, but for me that is already old...), which I still like. Although they are together, they look sad and allone...

Vanessa Beecroft

Every now and then I look through my older art-books again. This weekend I found some artist which  I haven't thought of for a long time. So I made some sketches inspired by them. This one is inspired by a performance in 1998 by Vanessa Beecroft (vb35). Her work fascinates me, I don't realy know what to think of it. I would like to see a performance live some day. I quite like her drawings as well, you don't see them very often.

colour and madness 4

Still sketching and loosing myself in the watercolours.... I would like to make a painting again, but I don't know if I want to continue the way I painted the last year. (you can find a overview of my paintings on my website).

the frog king in the snow

It's snowing for quite some days now and the Frog King does'nt look very happy... We bought this scuplture about a year ago at a market in Aachen (Germany). Unfortunatly I lost the adres of the maker of this beautiful sculpture. Now with the snow on his head I think he looks funny!

it's time to save your world

So I made another series of small paintings. I don't think I will continue this experiment. I made now 4 series and I'm still not convinced by them... Maybe I'll try to paint some of my sketches on this 18 x 24 cm size.

Dutch But Not From Holland

On the website of "Dutch But Not From Holland" you can see (and buy!) two of my paintings.

Dutch but from Holland offers a collection of special design and art products from the land of "Zachte G", a community of 400 plus creative people situated in the international region of Limburg, the Netherlands.

All selling artists are members of the Zachte G community, a vibrant webcommunity with a diverse population, consisting of young designers, creative entrepreneurs, and artists. The platform Zachte G welcomes young talents, fresh initiatives and the unconventional thinker and is in its own way a contribution to a vital climate for creative individuals in the area.

The name of the shop, “Dutch but not from Holland”, refers to the nature of Limburg people, which is certainly not the same as the rest of the Netherlands. And that makes all the difference. 

color and madness 3

Still drawing in my sketchbook.... At the moment I realy like watercolours. And also just to practise the shapes of  the body, concentrading on hands or feet and experimenting with colour. And because I don`t have any fix ideas, it's working for me!

blue velvet rabbit

I found the illustration by Sebe Emmelot in the newspaper. The rabbit is swimming and I think he looks very scared. I like the way he's draw, the colours and especially the look in his eye. So I did a drawing of Pollock, but my blue pen went out of ink, so it became a bit of a weird drawing...

color and madness 2

The last couple of weeks I just love to draw in my sketchbook. Every time I want to start a painting I find myself sketching. At the moment I prefer doing that over starting a painting. Just draw and trying some new stuff without the pressure that is has to be "good", which I almost always feel when I'm working at a painting.

quite happily

Working on some more small paintings and some sketches. Just drawing and painting and it makes me happy!

and then we fell back out

My experiment continues: another three paintings with almost the same composition. I still don`t know what to think about the small paintings...

color and madness

Just drawing in my sketchbook and trying out the watercolours. I like to draw people, especially woman as you can see... If I have a good day when I'm drawing, I can forget time and place.

how the birds will sing

Today I had a visitor! We have a big garden with even a small forest at the end. I often saw the woodpecker over there but today he came all the way up to the pavement in front of the house! We put a part of a dead tree on the terras and he started to make a hole in the tree, which I think isn't very smart because of the neighbours cat... And there are much better places for him in the forrest, but it was nice to see him work.

waiting for a cloud

I continue with my experiment to make smaller paintings ( 18 x 24 cm, read my post "let's take life nice and easy" earlier this month). I try to make three paintings of the same composition but they are slightly different from each other. I already did this composition in a bigger painting (sitting on the fence, 150 x 100 cm) which you can find on my website.