out of storage

Yesterday I visited the exhibition "Out of Storage". The exhibition takes place in the "Timmerfabriek" in Maastricht and it's the former crate factory of the ceramics factory Sphinx. It was built in 1905 and has been on the list of national monuments since 1996. It's a beautiful old building and I think it's great that it's not been demolished, but they made someting else out of it. I love it when exhibitions take place in a different kind of building, not only in museums.
The exhibition consists hundreds of artworks from the collection of FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais. Some of them are on display during the whole exhibition period, some works of art are being replaced by others in the course of time. Of you live nearby or planning a vacation over here, you should visit this exhibition, the building alone is worth it!

play my darling play

This is the drawing that I posted here when I was making it. I wonder what you think of it... For me she is quite innocent, just playing around, but she knows what she is holding in her hands. She looks happy to me. I can see her running in her bathing suit in the sun and at the same time she is dangerous.

know a colour

The last weeks I made 5 of those big (150 x 230 cm) Pippi-drawings and I used only 7 red pencils, which I find amazing. Apparently you can draw a lot with one pencil. I think I'm going to make more of these drawings and after a few years I can make a special cabinet for the pencils.
This weekend I took pictures of the last 3 drawings I made and I hopefully post the first one by the end of the week.

silly sorrow part 4

Just another cabinet I would like to show you. I like this one because I love to sit on the couch and read a book. I just find it very difficult to take the time to do that kind of things. I feel like I always have to do something: draw, work, clean the house or whatever. I really have to practise to take time for me and to do nothing at all. That's why this cabinet is called "all the noise".

girl giants

"I like giants - especially girl giants. 'cause all girls feel too big sometimes, regardless of their size."

This is a sentence of the song "I like giants" by Kimya Dawson, which I really like. It's so true and told in such a different way then the normal stuff you hear about size and weight and I think it's funny at the same time.  I was listening to it and thought about an older drawing I once made about this issue.

I like collecting sentences and words. I have a book where I collect all different kinds of text that crosses my way: out of books, magazines, songtext or the newspaper. And out of all these different things I make my own story or titles for my drawings. I love words, I just can't find them in myself. Maybe that's why I draw.

hold on - almost done!

 

I'm working on the next drawing and I wanted to give you an idea of my way of drawing and the size of the paper.

undiscovered places

Yesterday we made a trip to the cities "Weert" and "Roermond". They're only about 45 minutes away from where I live and I had never been there. People fly all over the world but they don't really know their own country. So sometimes I go to places that are nearby that I've never visited. In Weert we accidentally walked in a museum which turned out to be a religious museum with mostly old paintings and a lot silver and gold stuff. In a small room around the corner there was this sculpture made by Desire Tonnaer. It shows Maria Magdalena as a mummy in a way archaeologists could have found her. I find this sculpture fascinating and a bit scary and it was a absolute surprise in this museum.
The picture below I took in Roermond. This poor guy was standing in front of toyshop and covered in plastic because of the rain. I immediately fell in love with him! Those are the only two pictures I took the whole day...

innocence locked up

I finished the second large Pippi-drawing. They're so hard to photograph, because of the white paper you have shadows all over it. And because they're so big it's hard to find a good place to hang them and take a picture. I just have to wait for better weather, then I can take them outside and try again. So I'm sorry for the not so good quality of the picture...
This one is rather different than the first one I drew. The first Pippi made her own decisions and was in control. This one is not, I guess. It's not even clear to me if she put the cartridge-belts on her body herself or not, or if she's forced by the other Pippi's. In the end, working on this one for 3 or 4 days, kind of frustrated me, because she is so pithless and at the same time I feel sorry for her. I have lots of time thinking about her story if I'm drawing. Now I'm already working on the next one, this girl gets a little more guts again!

tomato-girl

In May I introduced you to my red hot chili pepper-girl. I got inspired because I grow my own vegetables and I thought a sculpture in as always nice in the kitchen! Now the pepper-queen is no longer alone: I made a tomato-princess. She's a bit bigger, about 100 cm. Because of the bad weather this time no pictures of the sculpture in the garden. Both sculptures are standing in my kitchen, on the window sill.

peek in sneak about

I started another big pippi-drawing, also in red. This one is a bit different then the first one I made. This drawing has a different kind of energy, because there's less movement in the figure. But I write more about it when it's finished, because you can't see the whole drawing at this point. But I can show you a preview on her dress:

PS: a little something I just wanted to share with you about my trip to Rotterdam. Thanks to Nelleke's blog I visited the exhibition 'Colours in My Hand' of Ayako Rokakku. She's a Japanese artist (1982) and she moved her studio temporarily into the Kunsthal's ‘daylight hall'. Every day for three weeks until 17th of july she will be working on an ‘artwork in progress'. Rokkaku will be painting large murals, or ‘live paintings', which she creates by applying acrylic paint directly to the canvas with her fingers. She shares with the public her very own world of bright colours and recurring symbols such as flowers, animals, boats and houses. A recurrent theme in her work is that of little girls with large eyes and long arms that she often portrays in close-up. Everyone can join in with Ayako as she paints at the Kunsthal and she was there as we visited. That was really a great opportunity to talk to the artist about her work that you have just seen. And she was so nice and sweet.
So thank you Nelleke for the wonderfull tip!

silly sorrow part 3

Tomorrow I'm going to Rotterdam for 1 week. I studied at the Willen de Kooning Academy and I lived there for 5 years. I left Rotterdam in 2003 and only visited friends for a day or so. Now I'm going back for a bit more days and I wonder how that will be. I picked some more of my cabinets to show you. This painting girl  and the mouse go well with Rotterdam, haha. The text is in mirror writing and it says in dutch "fuck geluk", which means "fuck happiness". In dutch it rhymes very nice. This cabinet is called "putting in change".
The next one is called "rainy days with views" and I'm standing in front of my window and hoping for nice weather for my trip!

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!