Finding beauty close to home could be the recipe to joy. I find beauty every day when I bike or walk through the Rembrandtpark. I started in early 2025 to paint an ode to this park, and it turned into an ongoing series. A few of the smaller paintings have been exhibited in the WG… Continue reading Ode to the Rembrandtpark
Plyers of enlightenment
When my friend told me about her research on the workings of brain cells, and how she used “tweezers made of light” to pick up and change molecules, I was immediately inspired to paint the invisible events in our brains. In my other work I explore the various societal and psychological outcomes of humans combining… Continue reading Plyers of enlightenment
Connection – objects from recycled wood
There are many ways to connect; through language, through mirroring, through commerce, through garbage. I choose garbage from the piles of my fellow Amsterdammers, and transform it, through cutting and gluing and painting, until it is balanced but exciting too. Like a conversation where I understand you, but I can’t predict your next line. Exhibition… Continue reading Connection – objects from recycled wood
Escapist Landscapes
What is a landscape other than a framed part of land and sky? The Romantics allowed the landscape to be more than just a backdrop for (biblical) stories. The landscape became an active participant in the story; a story that was less about a beginning and an end and more about a spiritual feeling. People… Continue reading Escapist Landscapes
The Most Important Job
The Most Important Job displays the unpleasant side of parenthood and of childhood. While mothers are often seen as the tools of society, there to create the upstanding citizens of tomorrow, children are approached as just the product, or raw materials even, of motherhood. Part of the inspiration of this series comes from the work of… Continue reading The Most Important Job
Rich
In the ongoing series “Rich” I explore the various aspects of a world where there is so much inequality that the rich live by completely different laws from the poor. Our drive to possess kills nature, kills true connection, and will kill us as a species. Knowing all this, I still want a new pair… Continue reading Rich
Living with Animals
Covid – 19 forced us to acknowledge our biological bodies and our relationship with nature and the animal world. We are not above other species, we are part of one big organism. The more land we cultivate the more biodiversity deserts we create; petri dishes for disease. After months of lockdown in which I tried… Continue reading Living with Animals
Gifted
Gifted is a series of oil paintings that explores the inherent violent nature of the family bond, especially the parent-child relationship. In current times we are presented with a glowing positive image of motherhood that is only challenged in comedies presenting the complete opposite (bodily functions, calling children “little assholes”). However, in both scenarios the… Continue reading Gifted
Big Problems Small Paintings 2018
This series of 60 oil paintings, each one about 10 x 14 cm, started as a way to give all that worries me a place. A small painting to figure out my fears. FIRE: Forest fires caused by draught due to climate change. WATER: plastic pollution of the oceans. BLOOD: the immense suffering and environmental… Continue reading Big Problems Small Paintings 2018
Photo collages
I was taking photo’s in cities as an exploration of what spoke to me. Objects, buildings and compositions can speak to an attentive audience, willing to listen. How to form a connection to the world was already in 2007 part of my subject matter. When taking the photographs however, I felt so much clutter stood… Continue reading Photo collages
Masks
Masks fascinate me because of their transformative and metaphoric qualities. The need to develop an identity in relation to the world is not an easy feat, and a mask can help the wearer to try out different aspects of an identity. I feel that the dramatization of life has been laid into the hands of… Continue reading Masks
Storytelling performance
In 2015 and 2016 I aided a storytelling workshop organized by Jonatan Bartling and Ron Bunzl. The participants told their story and I made a drawing to each one while they were speaking. This drawing was then used to refine and shape the next version of the story. I had to listen very attentively, it… Continue reading Storytelling performance
Closer
The drawings in the installation “Closer” feature dead people found in their home. They are drawn with extreme detail and precision, as a loving laying out on paper. The white of the paper plays an important role in the drawings and could be seen as a reference to disappearing, and it also places the focus on… Continue reading Closer
Lariks
Animation about the online platform Lariks.org, where people connect to build their ideal home.
Satisfaction
Who doesn’t want to be in a band? A short film in which artist Rini Brakkee impersonates Mick Jagger doing the famous Rolling Stones song, accompanied by a marionette version of Charlie, Ron, and Keith. Directed and filmed by Joris Brakkee.
De Voegen De Stenen De Voegen
As a part of Voix Editions I was asked to design a book to fit into a matchbox. Such a tiny sweet box; I decided to make a lot of anger and despair come out of it. The text is a monologue shouted out by a crazy lady in the street. She gives voice to… Continue reading De Voegen De Stenen De Voegen
Out Where
Words and lines in the city, coming together in a book to form a poem. The book is about getting older in the city, the streets filling up with memories, the city becoming like a walk-in photo album. When walking through this photo album questions arise: what was the essential part of my life? What will death be… Continue reading Out Where
The Spell
The Spell was an exhibition in gallery “De Stoker” in Amsterdam, 2014, but in the series are drawings from different years. They deal with solving the meaning(lessness) of life. We need rituals, habits, paradoxical sayings to cope with imminent disaster, unpredictability and the big empty universe around us. Touching the mystery is learning to love… Continue reading The Spell
Heautoscopy
Heautoscopy is a term from psychiatry and indicates the perception of yourself outside of yourself. The exhibition showed drawings in which dopplegängers regard each other. They seem to doubt the other and thus to themselves. We are black boxes to each other: something goes in, something comes out, but why, and what happens on the… Continue reading Heautoscopy
Installation 2010
Little girls want to be princesses, grown up girls want to own a rich husband. In a windowless office-like space on the fifth floor of Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam, on the dark grey carpeted floor, stands a small (1,5 x 2 metres) house made of old, partly painted wood, dirty roof tiles and a… Continue reading Installation 2010
All Answers
The printed pages in this installation are imitations of pages from the “Book of All Answers”by Carol Bolt; a book the reader can consult when in doubt about a decision (Bibliomancy). I however have made only negative answers like “you’re just not good enough” and “it’s all your fault”, as a protest against forced positive… Continue reading All Answers
One Born Every Minute
Reality shows encourage distancing yourself from others. They allow the viewer to gloat over problems that they themselves have. The makers of the programs squeeze real people into a format until they look like animals in a zoo, and the zoo keepers can inform the viewer about their habits. But nobody knows! Real life is… Continue reading One Born Every Minute