red hot chili pepper-girl

The season of growing your own vegetables has began! I grow my own tomato's, peppers, cucumbers, salad, strawberry's, rhubarb, herbs and hot chili's peppers. I still have a lot of peppers left from last year. They're hanging in my kitchen, I dry them. And we just finished the last tomato's from last year. So I made a sculpture for in the kitchen, the chili's need a queen! She's about 75 cm and I used one of my old barbie dolls. Now I'm working on a tomato-girl.

no room in my suitcase

Tomorrow morning I'm going away for the weekend. Together with my sister I'm going to the city Den Haag. We have to drive for two and a half hours but we'll have lots to talk about! I'm realy looking forward to it. We will spend the day in Den Haag and in the evening we go to the theater, so we have to look nice! And sunday we spend the day in Scheveningen, which is a modern seaside resort with a long sandy beach, a pier and a lighthouse. I haven't been to the beach for a long time. Wish you all a nice weekend!

let's not have a breakdown

As you can see: the first "pippi-heads"are ready and I'm already working on the next ones. And now I have a deadline when they should be ready and that's in about 3 weeks. Last week I got an email that I can take part in the "Kunsttour (Arttour) Maastricht". In that weekend you can enjoy contemporary art, design, sound and new media art forms in and surrounding the city of Maastricht. More than 200 artists will exhibit their work across 60 locations, such as artistic breeding grounds, galleries, studios and art institutions. And I want to show the pippi-heads as wel so I have to work hard!

Soon more info about the tour for those of you who live nearby!

where the grass is green

I wish you all a very nice and sunny Easter!

looking for true Niki fans

3 weeks ago I told you in this post about visiting the exhibition Inside-Out of Niki de Saint Phalle in Schunck*. After visiting this exhibition I e-mailed them a picture of my tattoo and I got a response! They told me they're working on a "Niki zine" (from magazine...), and looking for pictures of  people who are inspired by her work. If they can place my tattoo? Of course I said! And the funny thing is, now is the museum looking for more people with a tattoo of Niki's work. So if you also have a Nana of flesh and blood or if you know anyone or you are just curious, click here!

What is Art? Art is what? Is Art what?

I had an overkill of art this weekend and now I'm exhausted. I visited the 2011 edition of ART COLOGN, where around 200 international galleries will be showcasing Classic Modernism, Post-War and Contemporary art and of course the popular sections "open space, new contemporaries and new positions" will spotlight cutting-edge trends in contemporary art. Pfffffffffffffffff......I always like to see what is going on in the world of art, but in the end it just to much and you can't take it in anymore. This time I didn't see anything that I found absolutely great, but I bought a wonderful book! I'm a huge fan of the work of Jenny Saville. She is one of the famous "british artists" that became famous in the nineties as Charles Saatchi bought their work. She paints bodies that emanate a sort of state of in-betweeness: a hermophrodite, a transvestite, a carcass, a half-alive/half-dead head. She uses paint in a sculptural way and it's all about painting flesh. And the way she does that is just amazing! I wish I could paint like that.

your favourite girl

So...... This is the new project I wanted you to tell about. I started to make small paintings (40 x 40 cm) with only the head of "Pippi". In every painting she has a different expression on her face. I want to make at least 16 of them, but maybe it will grow to a project I can always work on so I can cover a whole room with them. We will see, maybe I'll get bored by the time I paint number 4... 
Soon I'll post the first ones that are ready.

stop walking into my dreams

Sometimes you dream about people who you don't want to dream about. You don't want to think or to be reminded about them, but they just walk into your nice dreams. I always feel weird and not very comfortable when I wake up and I can remember those dreams.  It makes you think about those people all over again and the memories stay with you for a while.  And lately I noticed that the people you want to see in your dreams, they don't stop by as often as you want them to visit. In my post about Niki de Saint Phalle I told you about my mother: I wish she visited more often. But maybe she does and I just don't remember it.
Do you recognize any of this?

lazy crazy dreaming

It was such a beautiful, sunny weekend! I live in the south of the Netherlands and it was over 20 degrees over here. It's great to be outside at the moment, it's starting to get green everywere. It will probably rain again tomorrow so I'm going to enjoy the sun today!

kinda bored now

I finished painting number 4 in the "Pippi longstocking" series. For me it looks like she is bored being Pippi, the super powers are not enough, haha! And the monkey wants her to get up again.
I'm working now on a new project with the same girl, but more about that next week. Have a nice weekend!

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!