Preparing the Ground (2012–2017), Interlude from The Works

"Looking back, I realise that some of the most important changes happen almost invisibly."

There are periods in an artist's life when little seems to happen.

No new body of work announces itself.

No clear turning point can be identified.

Yet, beneath the surface, everything is quietly shifting.

Looking back, I realise that these years were not a pause between two chapters.

They were the years in which the ground was being prepared.

Around 2012, I began studying Mandarin.

Every day.

Character after character.

Stroke after stroke.

At first, I believed I was simply learning a language.

Only much later did I understand that I was learning another way of seeing.

Each character demanded patience.

Balance.

Attention.

Nothing could be hurried.

Writing became less an act of communication than a practice of presence.

Around the same time, my studio on the Brouwersgracht gradually became more than a place to paint.

It became a place of encounter.

Together with writer Lisette Thooft and mythologist Mieke Bouma, I founded the Circle of Mythosophy.

We organised evenings where artists, writers, philosophers and psychologists explored the enduring power of myths, symbols and archetypal stories.

Among our guests was Karen Hamaker-Zondag, whose Jungian perspective on symbols and the unconscious resonated deeply with questions that had accompanied my work for many years.

The Hero's Journey.

The labyrinth.

The ox.

Transformation.

The search for meaning.

These were no longer only themes in my paintings.

They became living conversations.

Looking back, I realise that painting was no longer my only way of working.

Language.

Conversation.

Reading.

Listening.

All became part of the same artistic practice.

None of this seemed directly connected to the paintings I was making at the time.

Yet everything was quietly preparing what would come next.

Without knowing it, I was cultivating the inner landscape that would carry me through one of the most difficult periods of my life.

Only later did I understand that these years were not an interlude.

They were the roots.

After years of working with large canvases, I also began making small ink drawings.

For a while there were plans to create a book together.

The book was never realised.

The drawings remained.

Looking back, I realise they were never meant as illustrations.

They were exercises in attention.

I tried to draw each figure in a single gesture.

Without correcting.

Without improving.

One movement.

One breath.

Only years later, through Chinese calligraphy and ink painting, did I recognise this way of working.

The brush was not describing the figure.

It was searching for its life.

Long before I encountered Chinese ink painting, I had already begun searching for the same simplicity.