According to Plato, beauty plays a role in the desire for a higher world. I recognize that. In my work, I always hope to capture something of the invisible and unspeakable. Impermanence and nostalgia, the realization that everything is ultimately not whole or held together, play an essential role in my experience and work. The slight melancholy shines through. To quote Lieke Marsman, “We raise our voices to drown out the senseless. Perhaps I do that by painting….

When I begin new work, slowly but surely something forms under my hands that shows me the way. Sometimes appealing to reason, other times to emotion. At each stage I am in constant dialogue with what is on the canvas – each square centimeter gradually finds its place within the greater whole.

Over the years, my work has constantly evolved. For a long time the focus was on coping with human suffering: the art of coping. I painted from my experience as a mental health therapist, where for years I was confronted with many forms of suffering and injustice, as well as from some personal, deeply felt losses, and the mourning that followed. This experience changed when my work as a therapist stopped and I walked the Camino to Santiago. A reversal followed; I experienced an inner urge to paint organic forms, inspired by nature, with more use of color and material. What also inspired me in this process was the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, in which she elaborates on the coexistence between humans and nature based on mutual giving, rather than unilateral taking, economic gain and control.

In my current work, I want to express and celebrate my wonder at and gratitude for the grandeur and richness of nature. I do this through more or less abstracted forms that can be interpreted in multiple ways, using a variety of materials and techniques. My work is also diverse in format. I limit my subject matter to vegetation and what is directly related to it – sometimes a reference to the degradation of nature, for which we humans are responsible, seeps through. I call them poetic reflections of nature.

I hope to take an occasional viewer into wonder, into transcendence and into deeper layers of reciprocity.