Mysterious Print

Maaike Wycisk is a self-thought Dutch artist, born near Rotterdam in 1979. During her life she has lived in many different places and countries. Currently she is living near Zürich, in Switzerland. All her life she has been intrigued by fashion and female portraits. Especially the story that they are trying to sell: a photoshopped reality without imperfections. With her work she digitally combines these “perfect” images with the rough structures of old magazines, walls, and graffiti. In this way, she also makes a digital, photoshopped manipulation of a picture by adding more layers and “imperfections”. With her work she is trying to show that the over polished, perfectionated images are even more interesting if imperfections and structures are added. Beauty is fleeting but that does not mean it does not get even more interesting! In some of her works she also adds butterflies to further underline the fragility of beauty and vanity. A portion of her work is not so much about the message, but just about having fun with different images. For these works she uses artists or celebrities that inspire her, or sometimes also animals or objects. In that respect, her work is mainly a discovery journey in which different images and materials come together to create a new piece. Maaike finds it interesting to combine the more “real” painting techniques with the modern techniques of digital art. After the digital manipulations the images are transferred to canvas where she adds additional layers with the use of paint mediums, structure pastes, acrylic paint, and spray paint. The mix of styles has a surprising effect and creates depth in the piece. The painting techniques that are applied make the work lively again, because it adds structure and depth to the image. As a result, it no longer represents a digital print, but an interesting mix of newer and older techniques. All works are original and unique works but can be ordered to size if desired. They are then printed to the desired size and edited with paint and medium in their own individual way. A limited amount of prints is available for each image, each piece being a unique piece of art.