The role of Textile in my work.

From the start
Textile and textile-related things, like buttons, cords, threads, patterns, belong to the roots of my work and have been more or less the focus of materials to work with. The intimacy of the material, directly related to personal and domestic life I use often in combination with paint or printing as an opposite: to the roughness of paint, or to the glossy outlook of digital printing. Sometimes I use textile as a revolutionary power to change the meaning of an object.

start: structure
In 1989 I started with a code system containing opposite worlds. It was in fact a psychological based structure in 3 x 3 = 9 squares, each with its own code. Each code/label symbolised a certain admosphere and personal meaning. One of the 3 directions in this systems is textile; the code: W, the color: white, the meaning: my childhood. The third label is for the outside world; the code: G, the color:green, the materials: all available. The second label is paint; the color: red, the code: R. I can ‘hop’ from one to another and freely change perspective. I found my answer to contemporary art of that time which was much more rigid (modernist).

second: losing the system
Looking back I can say that from 1992-1996 I gave up the system and started to work from my own world (habitat). Textile and textile related materials became the main material to work with. It became important to question the function of things: I made teacups in textile, worked with whipped cream on a dragline, and ‘bronzed’ textile. Also the psycological value of textile became a point of interest. Provoking the established art I started the Milkmaid series (after a painting by Vermeer) combining: performance, photography, painting and textile (costumes).

third: chaos
Roughly from 1997 anarchy broke out in my creative work: there were no boundaries anymore and I almost everyday made a painting, destroyed it and recreated it the next day. There also was no limitation in the materials I used: I made my canvasses of sawn bedsheets, pyama’s and expensive silk. I worked with oilpaint and objects from supermarkets or toystores. Painting with no plan just to create chaos and then organize that chaos in a work of art.

fourth: digital 2000
Outof practical reasons (storage!) I started more and more to work with the computer. Now I am a professional webdesigner (specialised in artists) and my technical know-how made it possible to design and print my work. My anarchistic nature comes out when the prints are in my studio and I ‘attack’ them again with paint, varnish, textile and oter ’things’ outof my habitat.

2007