Mixed media and collage on paper. This particular artwork is part of the Vintage Collages series. These collages are built up with all kinds of pictures, photos and images that I have collected over the years. Some of the works are created by only arranging photographs in a certain way. Other collages are created with that are pulled loose or torn. Old and torn, outworn and transferred images weathered. Layer upon layer. On some of the collages I painted acrylic patterns or animals and figures. Most of the works are also worked over with ink, pencil, watercolor or ballpoint pen

About the artist:

About 16 years ago I started making illustrations by using the drawings of my young kids, just because these were so funny and so totally innocent. I edited the drawings, added Indian Ink and watercolor and had these published as screen prints. The many editions in 150 and 200 series sold quite swiftly and completely.
Pretty soon I wanted to do more than just working with ink and watercolor, so I started to paint with acryl on canvas. A different technique all together, but surprisingly it went rather smoothly. Then started my personal quest for my own recognizable style, my own signature. A long winding road, learning by trying, never really being content with my achievements.
Unfortunately I go into bad weather financially at the time. For a while I just couldn't afford expensive canvasses and paint. I had to do with what I had left. But I just had to paint and wanted to create art no matter what. So I looked around for what I had and could use. What I had was many different sorts of paper and an endless number of old photographs, postcards, magazine images and similar stuff. I suddenly remembered that as a young girl I so much liked to cut images from magazines to paste them into school agendas, scrapbooks and even on my bedroom door.
Add to this the fascination I always had for walls filled with old posters, flaking paint, scrappy billboards and weathered paint, it opened an unexpected door for completely new opportunities. Completely unintended I found a new way of working, I felt pleasurably and comfortably at home in. What started out as copying old walls with worn out posters has grown into many series of new visual storytelling. Not simply just eclecticism, but bringing together many seemingly incoherent story lines into one completely new story, my own personal story.
Initially it lacked the one thing that is important to me, the transparency that normally only is possible with the use of watercolor. The unforgiving layering of transparent watercolors is a challenge I would not want to miss and after a lot of trial and error I finally succeeded in getting the collages as transparent as a watercolor. Every layer of paper, oil, acrylic, pencil, crayon, ballpoint, watercolor, ink, charcoal and whatever else I use, remains visible in the artwork. You can imagine it made me feel the queen of the ball !