Ik heb altijd al een voorliefde voor mooi papier gehad. En voor patronen. En voor dieren. In de serie schilderijen met origami dierfiguren komt dit allemaal samen. Bovendien houd ik van abstracties; er zit een wereld van verschil tussen een schilderij van een zeehond of een schilderij van een gevouwen papiertje in de vorm van een zeehond.

This year was all about animals: rooks on a postcard and squirrels, a dog and hares made from origami, among other things. Especially hares. The hare is my favourite. The hare is a common motif in art, and I understand why. For me, its appeal lies mainly in its ears. Of all the origami animals I have folded so far, the hare is also the most photogenic.

Around the turn of the year, I moved into a new studio in the Biotoop in Haren. After eight years of working in a pleasant but not overly spacious room, I was able to move to a large studio. With the new studio came a new subject: origami animal figures.

In 2021, in addition to postcards, I also painted a few shadow animals on wallpaper. There is more to say about the paintings with the postcards; you can read the stories behind them in the blogs on my website. And completely off topic this year, a painting of a shelf full of jars of peanut butter.

In 2020 werkte ik behalve aan de serie met ansichtkaarten ook aan andere schilderijen. Het nieuws rond het hamsteren van wc-papier in de Corona tijd, maakte dat ik nogmaals de wc-rol als onderwerp heb genomen.

I worked on the series of postcards throughout 2019. This series lends itself very well to responding to external requests. Group exhibitions or open calls often work with a theme; I usually work on a series with my own theme for a period of time and then find that I cannot connect with it. With this series, I can easily connect through the artworks on the postcards.

2018 was not a good year. Privately, there was a lot of turmoil due to family issues during those years, and that began to creep into my work at the end of 2017. I can see it reflected in 2018: I didn't produce much work, and there was certainly no room for new developments.

The series I started at the very end of 2016, featuring postcards of paintings, was a response to the art climate of the preceding years. Politics wasn't favorable to the arts, and major budget cuts and a dismissive attitude didn't do it any favors.

When sorting through the work I created in 2016, I noticed that this year work was loose sand; work that wasn't really part of a series.

In 2015 werkte ik verder aan de serie meubels. Van Ikea zijn er producten waarvan ik het idee heb dat half Nederland ze in huis heeft, dat zijn echt klassiekers geworden. Naast deze Ikea-klassiekers heb ik ook een aantal design meubelstukken geschilderd die je tegenkomt in ongeveer elk willekeurig woonblad.

In 2014, I started a whole new series: furniture. More specifically: pieces of furniture that you see everywhere, in people's homes, in home decor magazines, and at trade fair stands, for example. Ikea has a number of very distinctive products, such as the Bekväm stool and the PS locker cabinet. In addition to Ikea's mass-produced products, there are also designer furniture pieces that you can't ignore, such as Piet Hein Eek's scrap wood cabinet and the Egg chair, a design b

In 2013, I worked on a new series, or rather two series: butter and milk. The reason for this was the stress of choosing what to buy when shopping. ‘Butter’ was on my shopping list, just ‘butter’. Then I had to choose between all the different types, multiple varieties, from just as many brands. The idea arose to paint all the different types of butter, to illustrate how ridiculously large the selection in stores is, how hard all kinds of marketing departments are working.

In 2012 werkte ik verder aan de serie Functionele dingen aan de muur. Het tweede schilderij heeft me eens een slapeloze nacht bezorgd toen ik me realiseerde dat de maker van het schilderij met het schaaltje kersen, Jan Voerman Jr., pas in 1976 is overleden. Het auteursrecht eindigt 70 jaar na de dood van de maker en was dus nog van kracht. In lichte paniek heb ik de foto van het schilderij van mijn website afgehaald. Ondertussen weet ik dat de soep niet zo heet gegeten wordt

In 2011 schilderde ik verder aan de serie ‘Functionele dingen aan de muur’. Binnen de serie heb ik veel geëxperimenteerd met diverse technieken. In het begin schilderde ik alle patronen, daarna ben ik gaan werken met stempels en sjablonen.

In 2010, a new subject came my way, which I felt was something I could really get my teeth into. The series with the Smurfs and the ballet girls felt somewhat like a side track; this new series seemed more in line with the caravans and the new housing estates. I called it: “Functional things on the wall”.

I continued working on the series featuring identical ballet girls, the Smurfs series, and the caravan series. The paintings of the girls were intended to represent dream worlds, hence the clouds and flowers floating freely in space. For the Smurfs, I drew on my experiences in the office. Before I went to art school, I studied Business Economics and worked full-time in an office for several years.

After I started making autonomous works on paper of ballet girls in 2007, I also started making drawings of caravans in 2008. Not just as sketches, but now as autonomous works. Familiar subject, new medium. Large drawings in charcoal, often combined with pastel chalk. I also painted the first Smurf that year.

I continued working on the series of paintings featuring caravans and on its successor, the series featuring newly built houses. Later that year, I started another new series, featuring ballet girls. In this series, too, I was interested in uniformity, similarity in form, and universality.

In 2006, I continued working on the series of paintings featuring caravans with which I had graduated a year earlier, and I also started...

This year marks 20 years since I graduated, and looking forward to an exhibition later this year, you can already see here what I have been creating during this period. Starting with a few paintings from 2005, the year in which I completed my studies at the art academy in Arnhem and received a start-up grant from the Mondriaan Fund.