Storytellers XV Painting

As long as I can remember, I've been fascinated by the human face and its expressions, but maybe even more important: I’m fascinated by what’s behind this face. We're used to judge a book by it's cover, a person by its appearance. We are locked up inside ourselves. And in a world this big, you can feel anonymous and small when looking at the world through nothing more than a small pair of eyes. At least, that’s how I feel. To get wonderings like this onto the canvas, I’m searching for women I can identify with, to decrease the feeling of anonymity and alienation. I sometimes find them on the streets, some of them are close friends already. The important thing for me is that I feel that there is a connection between us, not needing to be explained easily. In my work, I search for a way to bring their inner world to the surface. By looking very closely at them, by studying their eyes, their expression, the small details, I wonder how much we’re alike, and yet so different. I ask myself how others look at people on the streets, if they ever have this feeling of recognizing someone, with the knowledge they’ve never seen this person before. In a world this big, would it be strange to think that there are in fact more people like you or me, people who are actually quite the same?