Residency time: August 2025
Show time: during Vruchtbare Grond festival
Where are you from and how does that affect your work?
I’m from a small town in the Netherlands, surrounded by huge grass fields. These fields have always been a major inspiration to me, they’re all the same, yet different. Exploring them has taught me to search for details: biking or driving for hours through a sort-of-empty landscape, yet so culturally dominated since the fields were created by people. There are traces that can only be found if you look for them. This is also the way I create work: by searching and collecting: semi for something, semi for nothing.
Describe the best piece of art you've created.
I think this is a funny question because my best work is usually my latest work. After I create a work, I soon feel disattached from it, since I’ve already changed a bit over the course of time. This is also why I never exhibit a work more than once. It feels unfair to me to claim the work of a previous version of myself. I still feature the works in a portfolio or show them to people, but to myself I’m strict. The only work that truly belongs to me, and is my best piece of art, is my latest work.
Who are your biggest artistic influences?
There are certain older artists that I absolutely love, but recently I’ve been very invested in this YouTube channel called Hometown Journal, where this man follows slightly unknown younger artists for a day and talks about their practice and influences. During my master's, I've drawn most of my inspiration (if I look at artists and not at objects/vibes/phenomena) from these artists, especially Hugo Winder-Lind, Hugo Ciappi, Justin Guthrie, and Babette Semmer. I follow them on Instagram to see their process, and if I’m stuck in my own making process, I rewatch these videos.
Besides these artists, I use the film Blow-Up by Michelangelo Antonioni as a base for almost all my works. I’ve seen this film many, many times. There’s something about it that deeply motivates me to create. My work always connects back to this film, even if I don’t fully intend it.
Where do you find inspiration?
I often find inspiration through music. Each work begins with a specific playlist that captures a certain atmosphere or emotional texture. If the work continues to resonate with that playlist, I take it as a sign that I'm on the right track..
Other than that, I take a lot of photos in my day-to-day life. I consciously walk around photographing objects or scenes that fascinate me, and I later integrate these images into my work. Sometimes I go on a “collecting trip”: I take the train to a random place and spend the day taking pictures. Often, I notice afterwards that I didn’t really see the place I visited, I was so focused on creating images that everything else faded into the background.
I look for traces of things that were once new and beautiful, but have since become outdated.