Semi abstract portrait paintings
Misty heads
A series created
whilst being submerged in the world of people with mental health challenges.
One whole month of freedom in a gigantic artstudio!
I was stunned when I was accepted into the art program Root-Brabant, hosted at at the “Landgoed Assissië”.
This is a special residential area where 200 mentally challenged people live.
It’s in the south of the Netherlands, near to where I grew up.
As the main goal there is the interaction between artists (7 of us) and the people who live there, there was no pressure to achieve any comercial or high pitched artistic goal!
This gave me the permission to play and to be messy. To dabble in intuitive mark making.
It was lovely to not know where it would take me.
I deliberately went astray from my very bright, colorful and precise flat spaces.
I even did away with the usual crisp outlines which my portraits get their recognizable style from.
This is actually a part of a: “helping-mom-to-remigrate” story.
This is what happened:
Universe has it’s unscrutable ways.
By the end of June I found myself stuck living on the sofa in my mom’s new, tiny senior flat in the Netherlands.
This is part of a: “helping-mom-to-remigrate” story.
With a starting Alzheimer dementia to make settling back more complicated.
I had decided to stay as long as necessary to get her the care she needs.
At the same time,
I was going crazy because of the lack of physical and mental private space.
I couldn’t even retreat into my “artmaking-concentration” of making small drawings without getting talked to by her every 3 minutes.
Then, out of the blue, I got presented with this opportunity of being hosted for a whole month at this art residency, near to where my mom was settling.
Just like that!
Mind you, none of my applications for this kind of residencies has been accepted over the last 18-odd years. Now it just landed on my lap.
Universe had my back!
This was the house we were lodged.
The studio was WAY bigger, check out the video below.
My main goal was to play and loosen up within my own style.
Click on the images of these semi-abstract portrait paintings to see the delicious details in close-ups and other info.
Check out how I painted these:
During the last week of the residency, I felt I wanted to share the technical process.I dabbled in a new technique that is called “Negative painting”.
I explain it with examples in the video, as the concept is hard to explain in text.
Apart from the technique, I fell in love with the richness of the inny-minny-miney details that are present all these portraits.
So I made this “virtual studio visit”-video.
(which took me 2 months to edit, because I am always so lengthy when I open up about my art-making!)
I hope you enjoy it!
TRigger warning:
The underlying leitmotiv of this artresidency was: identity, roots and belonging.
I was in my native country, and from the outside I look like the people there.
Yet from the inside, after having lived in a totally different culture for nearly 20 years, I felt a foreigner.
Whilst designing the portraits I kept: “identity, roots and belonging” in the back of my head.
Suddenly I felt like an imposter;
how could I not acknowledge the mental health issues that were going on around me?
It was not only about my mom, yet also about my sister, who was born with some kind of a mental not 100% up to what is det as the standard.
This has influenced me big time in my life.
She actually lived in places like these (not so big, not so lucious).
.
As a child I was afraid people would think that because my sister was “mad” they would classify me as being “mad” too.
Up until deep in my thirties I have had some awkward shame around being with her in public.
So here I was, emerged in this situation.
(Thank you Universe!)
And as I was drawing, I started to cry.
The heavy load of landing my mother safe back into our native country,
trusting the process, letting her by her self there….
So I decided to show myself more in the last portrait, the one looking strait back at the public.
With an overly tender face.
I am deeply greatful for this opportunity that has taken me into deeply artmaking in my home country.
I still take care of the needs my mom has and shall further develop in the near future.
I hope that with this series I have been able to touch and express some deeper points that life brings us.
And I hope it reminds us all that everybody has struggles on the inside that nobodies sees.
Let these artwork help us to remind this. And to remind us that all emotions are valid and beautiful.
Let’s be kind to eachother.
