they say the world is round

I finished the drawing and I just hope that I don't scare you away with this one... I know it's a bit violent but at the same time: what can shock us these days? And that is a bit what I'm working on now. I take this figure of Pippi, and this time the younger, child version and not as in my paintings where I made her a grown-up. And I wonder: how much longer does it take before they take away our childhood heroes and make them also "bad", along with the rest of the world. And at the same time I wonder if the heroes maybe did'nt want to be heroes at all! I want to make at least 5 of these big drawings and all in the same style and theme. I find it a bit stange myself that I'm working on this now because I hate weapons. But I feel that I just have to finish them.

full of play

The last two days it was so sunny and hot over here: 35°C! So I made these simple computer drawings of a girl playing. It's just to hot to work.....

from my window view part 3

This is the last part of photo's of my garden. This is what you see when you go past the little gate. The people who lived here before us, used this part of the garden as a dump for the materials they used to build the house and all kind of other trash. We had a lot of work to make our own small forest look nice again. I found a lot of roof tiles and this poor dog (which I painted and make look nice again) and I build this sculpture out of it. Now he his the gatekeeper of the forest!

And at the end of our garden we have this beautiful view:

all is quiet

I'm working on a new project with my "pippi's: big drawings in only one colour. This drawing is 150 x 230 cm and the head is just a part of it that is already finished. I'm drawing with a red colour pencil and I can tell you it's a lot of work! But to my own surprice I like working with the colour pencil and after a while it's really restful. My head is empthy as I just draw one line after another. Pippi herself doesn't look peaceful at all, but that is another thing...Hopefully I can show you the whole drawing by the end of the week.

silly sorrow part 2

I would like to show you some more of the cabinets I made. This one is called "swallow worries" and is one of my favourites. I don't really know why, I like the idea that you can look inside her livingroom and that you only can see the cat from behind and wonder what he might think. And why does she feel so bad or is she just tired?

The next one is called "all about where and when". The drawing in the back I posted before, but as you can see I also used it for this cabinet. I like using my art in different ways. This one just makes me feel good!
(The only problem is that these works are very difficult to photograph, I hope you get an idea!)

empty seats in the sun

We're renovating a part of the house: the sun-room. That room is in a really bad state so it's going to be teared down completely and then build up again from the ground. It's going to be a part of the living room so the wall inbetween the two rooms has to go as well. If everything is going according to the plan, they start working next wednesday. So we started to move everything out of that room and also a part of the living room. What a lot of stuff we have! The drawing looks a bit sad but I'm just tired of moving stuff around.

hurrah

This is my hundredth post! So I thought I should celebrate that a little bit. A month ago a made a postcard of one of my paintings, I gave them away during the KunstTour and I still have some of them left. This is the perfect opportunity to do a little "give-away". Normally I have between 4 and 10 comments on one of my posts, so I give about 10 cards away. If you wants one, leave a comment and I contact you for your adres. I only send cards to people you leave comments on my blog on a regular basis, otherwise I don't think it's fair. And sorry Lela and Helmi: you already got one.

Thank you all for your nice comments and support, it helps me a lot dealing with many doubts about my work.

from my window view part 2

We had a beautiful week here in the south of the Netherlands, very sunny and hot and only a bit of rain yesterday. So this is the perfect opportunity to post the second part of the garden, as I promised. On the next picture you can see the spot where my rabbit Pollock lives, I guess he was inside his cage when I took the picture.

In part 3 I'll take you behind this small gate...

silly sorrow

This small cabinet is a part of a serie I started in 2008. The serie is called "Silly Sorrow" and includes now 16 of these small cabinets. They are 16 x 16 x 4,5 cm big and you have 3 cm of space where you can put  objects in it. In the front there's glass and I made I few cabinets where I painted the glass. I showed this one at the exhibition, because it has a little bit of the Pippi-theme in it. Each cabinet has also a title of their own, this one is called "for the good times". I really like them because they tell little stories. Maybe next week a post my favourite ones!

succesful weekend

The KunstTour-weekend is over and now I'm exhausted, but it was great! I did not have such high expectations, but there were so many people and I had so many conversations and discussions with visitors and artists. The organisation wants the artists to be there to talk about their work and stuff, so I did. That is why I'm so tired: I spend to whole weekend there! The response to my work was also very good (even if it was hanging on these small walls, which I don't like very much, but it worked out) and it was so nice to talk to so many differrent people. I even met Helmi, who came to see my work, what blog can do! Maybe I'll post something more about it this week, when I can think again!

every then and now part 2

I finished the other two matresses I told you about in this post. I'm happy with the result and I'll show them in Maastricht during the KunstTour. Tonight is the opening and I'm a little bit nervous!

Art Tour

From Friday May 27 to Sunday May 29 you can enjoy contemporary art, design, sound and new media art forms in and surrounding the city of Maastricht during the KunstTour (ArtTour) 2011. More than 200 artists will exhibit their work across 60 locations, such as artistic breeding grounds, galleries, studios and art institutions.

The theme of the twelfth ArtTour edition is ‘Language, Sound and Art‘: The borders between poetry, painting and writing fade and disappear when painting poets and writing painters join their creative forces. From Gibberish to Esperanto, my mouth still speaks the tongue of my mother.

So if you live nearby and you have nothing else to do next weekend, it would be nice if you could visit Maastricht. I will probably be there mself so maybe I can meet some of you! You can find my work in the central location:  De Eiffel (Boschstraat 24). Here, the Art Performance Night, the Hermine van Bers award, the Gulpener Puurzaam audience-choice award, the Debate Without an End #3 and the exhibition Neue Positionen take place.

My first attempt to hang the "pippi" portraits ( I will finish hanging them this week):

the wonders of my world

I've been tagged by Barbara, owner of the wonderful blog Barbara's dogs and colors, to write seven things about myself. Well, that was a shock but here we go! (hope you still like me afterwards!)


*The first thing has to do with the drawing: say "hi" to my oldest stuffed animal. I got it when I was a baby and I still adore it! It's a sheep, which brings me to the second thing:


* I collect sheep.... I don't know if it has anything to do  with the stuffed animal, but I love sheep and anything that has to do with them....


*I'm a vegetarian for about 14 years.


*I'm allergic to nuts, I get really sick and I have to go to the hospital when I eat them. I go crazy when I think there was a piece in my food. I try to hide my fear  for the people around me.


*I wanted to become a professional dancer, but at the age of sixteen I broke something in my knee and my career as a dancer was over.


*I  work for the post office and bring people their mail to earn some money besides selling my art-work, which is really my job.  But it has one good thing to bring the mail: I have a really good condition!


*I have a crush on the actor John Malkovich ;-)


That's it, hope you enjoyed it and I tag the wonderful Lela and Annton.

every then and now

Sometimes new ideas can be so easy. You don't have to search for them or stay up all night, trying to come up with something great. It doesn't happen very often that an idea is just there, in your head, and you don't have to think it over, everything is just right about it. I'm working for the exhibition that is coming up and I thought about the mattress of an old bed that is still lying in the attic. And I realized that it has the same pattern that I create in the background for my paintings. The fabric of the mattress is almost the same! It's a great feeling when somthing like this happens, it creates so much new energy. Besides this mattress I have another two, they are all 100 x 65 x 20 cm, so small ones and now I'm making painted objects out of them.
And the funny thing is: last year I wanted to clean the attic and throw stuff away and I'm so glad I was to lazy!

"deliverance at last"

"deliverance at last" are the words on the cover of the magazine which Schunck* published on the occasion of the exhibition "Niki de Saint Phalle: Outside-In". I told you all about the exhibion in this post and that they're working on a "Niki zine" (from magazine...), and looking for pictures of  people who are inspired by her work in this one. And now the Nikizine is ready and they published my tattoo! I'm very happy with it, to be connected to her work and on a project like this. I want to share a part of the text about art, which I found very powerful:

"What makes the work of the artists who have been sidelined as "outsiders" so interesting and topical is that it indirectly reflects the way we deal with critical, nonconformist voices. As self-affirmed "insiders", we are all too happy to label those who think differently as "outsiders" in order to prevent our own convictions being placed in perspective, our fixed view of the world becoming unsettled and our carefully-constructed identity being placed in doubt."

from my window view

And now for something completely different (to speak with Monty Pyhton, I watched some of their sketches this weekend), these are some pictures of my garden. I think Mano asked me already 2 or 3 times to post some pictures of it, so here they are! Because the garden is so big, if I start walking it goes down for 150 to 200 meters, I'll post the first pictuers today and next week the second part and I guess there will be a part three as well!

how the birds will sing

Since we live in this house and we have this big garden, I noticed the birds and a started to feed them. Now I do that every morning at 6 different places.... a lot of work, haha! And now I feel really responsible since I red that it's also important to feed them in the spring, because they build their nests and the little ones are born and if you feed hem, they have less work... So now they wait for me in the winter, sping, summer and autumn! There're now so many of them, it becomes a paradise for birds and I think they bring even more friends...

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!