Outside-In

Today I went to the exhibition of Niki de Saint Phalle "Outside-In" at Schunck*, Heerlen. As long as I can remember I'm a big fan of her work. My dad had a book of her work and when I was young I just liked the colours she used at her sculptures: her Nana's.  As I grew up I became fascinated by her life, the things she struggled with. I love her Shooting Paintings, the idea is just great and wonderful that she shot her own paintings. That must have been some happenings! I love her way of feminism: not the pent-up, politically coloured form of feminism, but an unconstrained variant that celebrated a strong perception of woman in a way that was playful and full of humor. For De Saint Phalle, the feminine was first and foremost a mentality, an attitude towards the world rooted in intuition, openness, eroticism and feeling. In her eyes, this mentality does not exclude the rational, conceptual and dynamic that passes as masculine, but incorporates it and utilises the best of it. She believed this synhesis would eventually result in new, better human beings. Such a perception of woman, tending towards the androgynous, was new and provocative at the beginning of the 1960s.
To remind me that I can do anything as a woman and as an artist I have a tattoo of one of her drawings on my arm. It's the drawing of a Nana who has one arm and one wing: it's also a memory of my mother. She was a strong woman and she always said I could do everything I want!

a friday night

I had a busy week and I hope my evening will be as quiet as the drawing shows. I wish you all a nice and sunny weekend!

Nuralagus rex or a really big rabbit!

Next to the cute little rabbit you can see the Nuralagus rex. The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology annouced last week the news about this rabbit. He was jumping around at our planet about 4 million years ago, at the island Menorca. His weight was about 12 kilo. If animals live on an island, they become often bigger or smaller then the animals on the continent. The Nuralagus misses the special adjustments that a rabbit needs at the continent to escape from the enemy. He can not run that fast or jump and his sense of hearing was not that great. He just walked arround the island. They found bones so they could reconstruct the big rabbit.
I found this very interesting article in the newspaper and I made my own drawings of the big rabbit:

high heels clippin

I drew this very fashionable bunny-girl: with tight jeans and high heels. I think the computer drawing works better than the painting, although the elephants bring something funny and weird to it.
But maybe she is not that cool, and tells her pose another story...

the way to the sun - to fun

According to the calender spring starts today, and it happens to be very sunny in the Netherlands at the moment. We have already the first flowers in our garden. I feel already the new energie! I wish you al a beautiful day as well!

they were in our minds until forever

It took a while but I finished another painting. This one makes me sad in a way...

very pink superhero girl!

 Let me introduce you to Mega Mindy: she's a children's supernatural-superhero and very popular by young girls in Belgium and the Netherlands. A friend of mine asked me if I would make a painting for het daughter (age 5) for her new room and it had to be Mega Mindy!
The story of the television show reminds me a lot at Batman... mmmm. It revolves around Mieke, a girl who lives with her grandparents and works as a police officer but also has a secret identity as superhero Mega Mindy. She tries to keep it a secret, but falls in love with Toby who also works at the police. He is in love with Mega Mindy and doesn't know that Mieke secretly likes him and is actually Mega Mindy. She tries to find a way to balance between work and being a superhero, but it isn't always easy. (haha)
Well, I hope I made a young girl happy and I've seen enough pink for a while....

it's time so save your world...

float away

I made another small painting after a computer drawing. The drawing was actually used on an invitation for an exhibition. I still like it.

Requiem for a dream

A few days ago a saw the movie " Requiem for a dream". It is a film directed by Darren Aronofsky (the one from "black swan"). I was really impressed of the music, the scenes and the cuts he made. The film depicts different forms of addiction, leading to the characters’ imprisonment in a world of delusion and reckless desperation that is subsequently overtaken and devastated by reality. "Requiem for a dream" charts four seasons in the lives of Sara Goldfarb, her son Harry, Harry’s girlfriend Marion Silver, and Harry’s friend Tyrone C. Love. Each character is ultimately destroyed by addiction and self-delusion.
Lost in misery, each character curls into a fetal position.
If you're into movies, you should watch this one!

International Women's Day (8th of March)

One day to early, but now you can all prepare for:

International Women's Day (IWD), originally called International Working Women’s Day is marked on the 8th of March every year. It is a major day of global celebration of women. In different regions the focus of the celebrations ranges from general celebration of respect, appreciation and love towards women to a celebration for women's economic, political and social achievements.

The new millennium has witnessed a significant change and attitudinal shift in both women's and society's thoughts about women's equality and emancipation. Many from a younger generation feel that 'all the battles have been won for women' while many feminists from the 1970's know only too well the longevity and ingrained complexity of patriarchy. With more women in the boardroom, greater equality in legislative rights, and an increased critical mass of women's visibility as impressive role models in every aspect of life, one could think that women have gained true equality. The unfortunate fact is that women are still not paid equally to that of their male counterparts, women still are not present in equal numbers in business or politics, and globally women's education, health and the violence against them is worse than that of men.

However, great improvements have been made. We do have female astronauts and prime ministers, school girls are welcomed into university, women can work and have a family, women have real choices. And so the tone and nature of IWD has, for the past few years, moved from being a reminder about the negatives to a celebration of the positives.

Annually on 8 March, thousands of events are held throughout the world to inspire women and celebrate achievements. A global web of rich and diverse local activity connects women from all around the world ranging from political rallies, business conferences, government activities and networking events through to local women's craft markets, theatric performances, fashion parades and more. The United States even designates the whole month of March as 'Women's History Month'.

More info at internationalwomensday.

the kindest of kisses

This is the last drawing inspired by my trip to Disney. To bad it didn't work out for me...

like forever after

It was a great, exhausting weekend in Disney and I had the most wonderful, fantastic, scary and enchantingly meetings and adventures...

feel like mighty mouse

Please don't judge me: tomorrow morning I'm leaving for a trip to Disneyland, Paris. I'm going with some family and friends, we're staying in a small house, so that will be fun! Actually I'm not that into Disney, the most movies I find to "sweet" (but I like to see how they animate the drawings and see them make the drawings). But I realy like amusement parks, especially  roller coasters. So I wish you all a nice weekend and untill next week!

just take place in line

In the meantime I'm still working on my "pipi-girl-monkey-paintings". These are some sketches for the paintings I'm working on at the moment. So I'm working on some different things at the same time, but I like that. It gives me new ideas. Maybe in the future I create a "pipi-rabbit-monkey-girl", haha!

go somewhere breezy

Here is another small painting of a rabbit-girl. I finished it today and I quit like it at the moment to make such smalls works. Just create a small world and think about nothing and let the colour take over. I like the birds in the background. The picture below shows the original computer drawing, I think I made that one in 2009.

dum-ditty-dance (part 2)

Last week I posted a computer drawing of mine. I was thinking about making a painting out of the drawing.
I did and this is the result. It's a small painting, 24 x 18 cm. Of course it's different then a computer drawing, but I quite like this one as well.

amsterdamned

I was in Amsterdam this weekend, unfortunatly is was raining but it was still very nice. There are so much nice shops with interesting and very creative windows. Of course they are often blocked by the typical dutch bikes.

A completely useless fact: "amsterdamned" is a dutch movie (1988) by Dick Maas about a mysterious diver hiding in Amsterdam's canal system embarks on a rampage of gruesome murders, terrifying city officials and leaving few clues for the city's best detective, who doesn't suspect that both his new girlfriend and twelve-year-old daughter may be closer than he is to finding the killer.

Oh, and I met some inspiring old, dutch painters ;-)

dum-ditty-dance

This is another computer drawing of mine. At the moment I`m going through my older work and somethimes I start working on it again, but in a different way. I`m thinking of making a small painting out of it, just to try how it works with paint and airbrush. These computer drawings have a lot of white, which I liked very much when I was making them. This one has actually a lot of white on the left site, so the rabbit-girl is standing in the corner. I cut that of for this post, otherwise you can't see the rabbit very good. In a painting this would change and it becomes probably something else. I like this one, the shoes are much to big for this rabbit-girl so who does she wants to be?

her own little world

I used to make a lot of computer drawings, which I printed and framed for exhibitions. Every drawing was only printed once. So even it is made on the computer and I could printed as many as I wanted, every drawing is unique and an original. This drawing is special though, it's printed on a bigger size (40 cm x 60 cm) and there are 25 copies of it and numbered. It was made for an online sale and later for an exhibition.
Now I found the extra ones that where printed as a test and I decided to frame one for myself and hang it in my room. I still like the drawing, especially the bunnies: