I'm a painter of Dutch origin who has been living and working in Norway since 2008. Solidly trained as a painter at the Art Academy in Enschede my work has developed in a steady and consequent direction since finishing my Master in 1997. In the course of my career I've received a prize for young painters and been granted several scholarships from the Dutch Art Council. This has made possible a continuous focus on the development of my work.

My work has now reached the 'adult' phase where form and content have merged. After years of developing the different aspects of my work, it was in 2013 that I created the work REALosaka
( image 1. in the application). It was the confluence of content and painting styles that has made this work a key-work in my oeuvre.

Geometrical abstraction, text and realism, once different periods in my long development, came together in one work. The introduction of an underlying narrative and the use of different painting styles and enhancing this by use of different paints made this work what I call My First Work. All that I had done before now made sense.

It is in paint that I communicate my ideas. The combination of sensitive oil-painting for the realistic parts of the painting and the hard-edge acrylic-paint and metallic paint tells my story of different layers and viewpoints; how we combine contradictory perceptions and a fragmented here and now into one, in short: modern life.

The theme of my work basically revolves around home and somewhere else. Said in another way the place where I am, Norway and the place I can imagine I am, Somewhere else. Reality and imagination. Physical and mind traveling is what motivates the work. At the same time it creates a vision of the world we live in, how we move in it and how it moves me. The viewpoint is critical, observing and emotional. The form, a firm belief in painting as a relevant and timeless medium of creating a vision of 21st century life.