Artist Profile | Artist Statement

Statement

During the last years I have been working with photography, silkscreen and object making.
I have been using different concepts: like for instance visible-invisible. I take this concept literally; something which is visible exists and is reality, so one can photograph it, but in its essence it only exists because one feels that it exists. This is the dimension I want to use.
It is the divers personal sides (particularly the progress of them) in human beings which interest me. I’m thinking, for example, about the different forms of emotion.
I try to give my feelings shape. I want each form to be on its own, and to leave it literally in its own context. I am looking for the greatest possible simplification of form and intensity of feeling.
In my work I use premeditated photography. By this I mean that I am working from a concept, but during the shots changes can take place, which I use again during the process. Using myself-image is important for me because the intuitive part which is active during the process of taking the photographs is essential for the result. In my works the self-image becomes in a way impersonal, while at the same time they are coming directly from my personal emotions.

Regarding the content of my current creative work:
I use photography, silkscreen printing, lithography and Polaroids. In the beginning I have my own images, not what can be seen literally. I manipulate or modulate images wherever I find this necessary, with light, added colour, filtering, intermediate steps from photograph to internegative to image, until they correspond with my own image and become recognizable as such.
I have worked from various concepts, such as: transient-basic;
mortality-sexuality; visible-invisible.
These concepts change and repeat themselves. They repeat themselves as my thoughts/ideas on a subject change, expand, develop.

I work with concepts that I consider extremes, opposites, such as:
reason-feeling (emotion), conscious-unconscious; bringing them
together in the content or execution of my work.

The elderly people portrait series:
I took photographs of demented elderly people; these people were approaching ninety and were living in a home where I worked 12 hours a week as a recreation worker.
From these photographs I made slides, which I projected onto paper.

On the paper I painted, changing the images; I photographed the results with
a Polaroid camera and put these Polaroids on a CD, from which I made ciba
prints. I wanted to portray these people because I observed that when people
are in an early or advanced stage of dementia, only their emotions are
preserved.


I work from metaphors, such as reflecting water.
Water is a mirror without foil, like a reflecting, transparent water
surface. The water surface lets through light as well as reflecting it. The
incidence of light and the contrast between light and dark cause the water
surface to act either as a mirror or a window; in nature, the light of the
sun, the moon and the stars determine the incidence of light and the
reflection in the water.
In my photographic images I look for the reflection or mirror image of my
future pictures. A reflection is an image with nothing behind it. You
recognize only what you think you see, expect to see.