going nuts

We have a walnut-tree in our garden and what a coincident: since my last post about autumn the walnuts have started to fall down! It's guite some work to collect them all and it takes a while before they're all fallen down. Then they have to dry and well.....  I give them away to family and friends, because I'm allergic to nuts (see my post where I tell 7 things about myself). And every year I put a table outside and sell them.  When you drive around here you can find people selling their fruits, vegetables and nuts.We live in this house for 4 years now and in all this time only two persons did'nt put the money in the money box I ask for the nuts. So most people are honest ;-)

the leaves are gonna change

I know that it's still summer, but I can already feel autumn.  And I can't help it: I love it! The colours of the leaves are so beautiful, it gets a little bit colder and the air smells different. We didn't had much of a summer in the Netherlands, but I hope will have a beautiful autumn.

picture perfect

Your reactions on my post where I showed you these photo's of me while I'm drawing one of my big pippi-drawings, made me realize how important it is to see the drawings together with a human being. In the very beginning I told you how big the drawings are, but I guess you all realized it when you saw me drawing. As you all know I love working on the floor and at the moment it's actually the only way for me to draw. So I "faked" a photo of me while I'm working at a drawing, so you can see the whole drawing while someone is standing in front of it. You can see all of the drawings I made untill now on my website, including the titles I gave them. You can also see this one without me blocking the view... (I like this one because of the energy the girl has in her movement). What I'm trying to say is: thank you for your nice and helpfull comments, it means a lot to me!

nerve-wrecking acrobatic backwards bend

Friday night I went to the opening of Cultura Nova. It's a multidisciplinary summer festival which offers a varied programme for adults and children over the course of ten days, including theatre, dance, visual arts and film.Cultura Nova aims to amaze, evoke wonder and surprise, and to introduce a new audience to unconventional forms of theatre, dance, music, film and visual arts as well as to productions that explore and cross the dividing lines between the individual disciplines. Artists and ensembles from various countries will aim to move the audience in various – special - locations and stages throughout Parkstad Limburg and over the border in Germany. The openig show was done by Voalá Project, which is a Spanish/Argentine company. It was really amazing, you can see it a bit in the first two photo's. I would love to be part of such a show!
The last photo shows 3 people on stilts in white clothes. At one moment they started to blow-up and transformed into these bubble-people. It looked wonderfull, especially when the lights inside the bubbles got on.

go back to the city

I sorted out some more photo's of my day in Masstricht. I already showed you some photo's of the exhibition I saw in this post. As in most cities you find the interesting scene's outside the centre. Did you see the wall painting in the first photo? I didn't see it right away when I was standing in front of it, I like that kind of things. I wish you all a nice weekend!

silly sorrow part 5

Another cabinet I made. This one is called "it's a difficulty". The woman is standing in front of a mirror, so I drew her directly on the glass. I think it works, but I don't know if it's clear on the picture.
This one is about making choices or refuse to make them, but I think you can see that for yourself so I don't say to much about it.

win the game

I hope you don't get bored with all my Pippi-drawings.... But I still feel that I can work more on this theme and that there are different ways to say it and to try other things. So I 'm afraid that there are still some more Pippi's to come! I like this one because you look in the same way as she does, but you don't know what she's aiming at.
Although it's only thursday: I wish you all a nice weekend!

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.....