Looking back on 2008

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.

In the ballet girls series, I made a few paintings and patterns appeared in my work for the first time. And they have never disappeared. It's beautiful how one work generates another.

I also painted the first Smurf that year. Speaking of uniformity. As in the previous series, here too there is a subject, the Smurfs, where all individuals look more or less the same. I find that an interesting fact, that we all seem to want to distinguish ourselves and yet, within that, we are very similar.

It reminds me of the line from the film Life of Brian: “You are all individuals!”, to which the crowd chants: “Yes, we are all individuals!”.

1.        Home sweet home, charcoal and soft pastel chalk on paper, 70 x 100 cm, 2008

2.        No title, charcoal and soft pastel chalk on paper, 80 x 110 cm, 2008

3.        No title, charcoal and soft pastel chalk on paper,, 80 x 110 cm, 2008

4.        Herd animals, oil on canvas, 90 x 130 cm, 2008

5.        No title, oil on canvas, 100 x 170 cm, 2008

6.        Girls in the clouds (girls over the moon), oil on canvas,, 65 x 120 cm, 2008

7.        Girls' dreams, oil on canvas, 20 x 50 cm, 2008

8.        Smurfed out, acrylic on canvas, 110 x 110 cm, 2008

9.        Tea time, acrylic on canvas, 75 x 65 cm, 2008