What is your specialty, what makes your work unique? Or place your artist's statement.

I position my work in the gap between art and life. Forming this bridge I combine the formal aspects of my work, in which I stretch the boundaries of the institution of painting, with my personal motifs. I draw most of my inspiration from my own environment: pop-culture, utensils from my studio, street scenes, and product packaging have a clear visible influence on my work. I often work from snapshots taken with my phone or short written descriptions of what I see happening around me. By putting banal images in the context of an installation the normal starts to feel abnormal and is asking to be questioned by the viewer.

My practice consists of installations in which paintings, sculptures and video’s serve as building blocks. Painting takes a central place within my practice. I approach painting as a medium through different experiments; these experiments vary from driving over pieces of canvas and treating it as a painterly gesture, to installing fluorescent bars onto painting frames or rebuilding infrastructural elements such as red-and-white fences using classical painting material. By taking a conceptual approach towards painting I create mixed media installations that translate daily life into a flashy entity.
Sometimes the installation, or a part of it, is used as the stage for a performance. Other times the action of painting leads to a work that has the painterly gesture itself as its subject. The visual language I developed finds its recognisability in the size of the works, the use of bright colours and appropriated (commercial) images and texts and the repetition that plays an important part in these presentations. Different media melt together seamlessly through this spatial way of presenting. This gives the viewer the feeling of being surrounded by the work and therefore being an active part of the installation.

What are your ambitions? What do you want to be in five years?

In the next five years I aim to establish an artistic career that allows me to focus on further developing my work. In other words, I hope to be able to make a living in art and not work at the local snackbar. The coming two years I will be studying at the Frank Mohr Institute.

What is the most important thing you have learned during your studies?

During my time at the academy I learned how to develop a visual language through a verity visual experiments. I got to a better understanding of my own process: the observations and memories that gives rise to my works, as well as the fascination for the medium of painting that allows the work to take different forms. But above all; I learned to just go with your gut when it comes to experimenting, giving yourself as many possibilities to fail as possible, as it is the failed experiments that lead to the most unexpected works.

List of publications / exhibitions / prices / concerts / shows etc.

2020 - Production assistent at SHARP - Arno Schuitemaker
2020 - Group exhibition “It’s our turn!”, Kunstuitleen Utrecht
2020 - Group exhibition “Illustrate!”, Culture Cube
2019 - Group exhibition “The First Time Always Hurts”, LOU Oudenoord
2019 - Organizer and teacher educational youth program “WannaDoArt?”, Stichting INVAL!

2018 - Group exhibition Jubilee Stichting Pak An!, Lievelder Schans
2018 - Solo-exhibition “Wie wil mijn muze zijn?”, Borchuus Varsseveld