BLASPHEMY OR SPRINGTIME

'this-is-not-a-beer'

This is not a glass of beer, although it might look like one. The glass contains soda and orange juice. In Holland it's almost blasphemy to drink anything else than beer out of a beerglass. Maybe water, but certainly no orange juice. Anyway, the waitress  serving this drink on the most beautiful terrace of Leiden was very friendly and sunny . So I drank 'this-is-not-a-beer' with delight on this wunderful afternoon spent in the sun doing nothing else than enjoying life.

BEHIND BARS?

there is room enough to play

FREEDOM DEMANDS COURAGE

this painting is dedicated to everyone who is somewhere in this world trying to find the courage to be free

step into your world!

a sunday in the sun

embroidery-week, day 5: INSPIRATION

The writing about my embroidery, the taking of the pictures, the reading about other textile artists on the internet. It all inspired me to start a new embroidery work yesterday. Look at some details here!

embroidery-week, day 4, association

How do I work in my embroidery? Like with almost everything I do in my art, I start doodling. This means that I embroider lines and forms without any plan at all. I find these beautiful pieces of fabric, wonderful pieces of paper, some lace from an old bra. No matter what. Sewed on a larger piece of fabric everything becomes extremely beautiful and it gets a meaning. While I work images appear in my head. The lines take a more defined form. I see a fish, a house, a face.

The process is sometimes slow, tormenting or meditative. Sometimes I become inpatient. I grab some paint or use my sewing machine and work very fast. And then there is always that moment of reflection in which I find that one small corner in the piece of work that I want to stand out using the most beautiful stitches I know.

embroidery-week, day 3, International Women Day

It is so strange. I tend to feel a bit embarrassed about telling that I do embroidery. Why? Because of the air of it being an old fashioned hobby ? Or maybe  because of the association with boring  Sunday afternoons? Or because I have to think about grandmothers in the past who said that your hands needed to be busy always, because else…  Yeah, what else?  In that way embroidery belongs to what it means to be a good girl. And who wants to be a good girl these days? Certainly not me! And certainly not on march 8^th, International Women Day!

So, this post is in celebration of the women all over the world and of embroidery being it boring, old fashioned or not!

embroidery-week, day 2

'1000 beautiful things'

I made this work while listening to Annie Lennox' song called 'a thousand beautiful things' playing it time after time in my studio. Check the link and listen if you like it at much as I do.

embroidery-week, day 1

'THREE'

In the recent past I did a lot of embroidery. I love the slow proces in which a piece of art is build stich by stich.I love the way it makes me calm and focussed. In embroidery being in a hurry is no use at all. So all you can do is be very patient and enjoy every thread, every line, every  form in every color while the time seems to stop.

In the coming week it is my intention to post a picture every day of one of my embroidery art pieces.

Enjoy it!

portrait of a photographer