Artist’s statement
Having been a mail artist for the past 20 years has shaped me as a collage maker. Being a trained photographer gives me the opportunity to find beauty in small discarded patches of color, graphics or in images. I work with rescued found papers (newspapers, photo’s, zines, old books), dried nature pieces that i collect on a daily basis.I use glue, pens, ink, paint, pastels, tape, stitching…
I find it satisfying to create a new image out of two or more parts of cut outs. Time stops while looking for a balance in color and form and making a new readable image is very exciting.
The process of puzzling together paper pieces several times before they finally fit together and become a new item can be very slow but impulsive.
In the end, I try to create a new image that is based on several old ones but with a completely different meaning and form. It is an ongoing process that changes as I discover new ways of working in the collage medium.
enveloppes series
This series of (collaged) letters came along as I was going through a stack of letters that came to me when my friends’ parents passed away. Trying to keep the spirit and hold on to the visible and tactile remains of communication that has been made over a certain time in their lives, I tried to reconstruct the beginnings of that sending and receiving through postal services cleaning away the stamps and the addresses and keeping the bare enveloppes as what is left after all life has gone. The glueing together and reconstructing of the enveloppes has been a work of puzzling and shaping and in the end leaving me (or the viewer) with an open ending.
