Wool paintings

In the time when I just finished my fine art education,  I moved from the north of Holland to the west. I was often strolling the along the dutch marketplaces, both for cheap and fresh vegetables and interesting second hand materials to use in my artwork. At that time, a lot of second hand woolen blankets were for sale.

The ‘old’ way of having linen sheets and a woolen blanket to spend the night under as I was accustomed to from my childhood, was more and more making place for the modern lightweight comforters, filled with natural feathers or artificial fiber and so the heavy woolen blankets were dumped on the second hand markets. These warm covers that kept me save and warm i many dark and lonely nights.

In my academic years I had been inpsired by Joseph Beuys ( see image under “Beuys just want to have fun” my light performance act”) and in this case his use of materials like wool, fet and honey as conveyors for meaning seemed both innovative, deeply poetic and meaningfull to me.  Wool seemed so much more honest, exciting, challenging and more attractive as a material and surface, compared to she standard canvas and its more flat illusion of painted images.

I have been educated in graphical methods, in which the relation and expressions between image and material is closely knit.  Wool is warm and natural and a material of both quality and durability. I wanted to work with this material and it seemed to fit my motives at the time; they wanted to be spiritual. I was into different ways the form of body positions can signify spirituallity. The spiritlike motives and the warm protection of wool seemed to want to merge.