Originally from the Netherlands, my diverse career path has taken me from semi-professional tennis in my youth, to civil engineering at Delft University of Technology, a PhD in Coastal Engineering from the University of Aberdeen, to fine art.
Now as a multi-award winning artist I produce contemporary work on heritage, landmarks and industries using oil paint and intaglio printmaking techniques. Scotland: Darg and Drams is my latest project. Having lived in Scotland for over a decade I see its beauty in the natural grit of everyday life. My picture-postcard Scotland gives a ‘rough around the edges’ portrayal, a Scotland absorbed in work and play, and at one with its environment.
My work captures life at the shipyards, heliport and hangars of Aberdeen, the ‘Oil Capital of Europe’, where workers ‘grump and joke in muted tones at red-eye time’. Life in the barns where the whisky casks are made; a trade associated with traditional skills and craftsmanship, yet a modern part of Scotland’s industrial landscape. At Knockando Woolmill, who create woollen textiles on Victorian machinery, at Thainstone Mart, where the ringmaster auctions off livestock by circling them before a captive audience and in the pubs where fiddle music carries the locals into the early hours after a long week of grafting.
The art residency at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica has given me the resources to approach my subject matter differently through alternative printmaking techniques, bringing me out of my comfort zone and allowing me to explore in greater depths the technical aspects of my work. The Scuola also have put me in touch with Scuola Del Vetro Abate Zanetti in Murano. Art works are created of the internationally known masters of glassworking. Drawings are created from life amidst the furnaces using pencil as well as ink.
I have won multiple awards including a Royal Scottish Academy Award, and exhibit regularly at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh, Glasgow, the Mall Galleries, Bankside Gallery and Royal College of Art in London. My work is in private collection as well as purchased by the Maritime Museum of Aberdeen and Angus Council in Scotland.
