I’ve been learning so much about abstract art lately, and doing a lot of noticing what I like, when I feel a piece works, and trying to figure out what it is that’s making it feel like it works.

This week, after getting in touch with some big grief I’ve been feeling, I sat and created some “Happy-mess” ink sketches of one of the things I appreciate now more than ever. We still share lots of cuddles and physical affection between the 3 of us in our household, but I grieve deeply for all of the other physical touch, closeness, and affection that Covid has stolen from me.

Almost every weekend, and often on both weekend days these days, we visit our favourite beach. It’s become something of a ritual with all the same elements that the four of us love, and so we repeat it all every time …

Having so enjoyed creating the Deconstructed Aloes series, and celebrating the business development success I’ve been enjoying in recent months, I went to bed with a very full and happy heart, looking forward to creating a series of Deconstructed Proteas the next day. But the next morning I woke to an unexpected and very worrying new development…

My history of art training was very much in the classical kind of representational art, where the goal is to observe really carefully and produce realistic art. It was the loss of 80% of my eye sight in 2013 that changed my art-making style and gave me the courage and new perspectives I needed to be able to make more expressive and abstracted kinds of artworks. These days I love working with magazine paper cuttings, so I’ve been playing with creating more abstract and expressive artworks with those.

I often get requests for framing suggestions when people buy my art. There are SO MANY frames to choose from, and then there are mats (the card borders that you can place between the artwork and the frame) and glass options too! How do you decide?!

If you live outside of the Netherlands and have been considering purchasing one of my originals, here’s what you can expect the shipping process to involve.

I don’t know about you, but this Covid pandemic has me feeling like my life has been taken over by a constant decision-making cycle of checking the local infection numbers, trying to get a sense of how careful others in our social circle are being, re-evaluating the risks of anything that involves leaving our house, weighing the risks against each family member’s (un)met needs, and trying to figure out what’s safe enough for us to do.

Perfectionism is such a pain! It faffs and meddles and distracts and whines and procrastinates and worries and freezes up and over-analyses and stays silent and judges and compares and competes… all in the very noble sounding name of “doing my best.”

With these aardvark sketches, I was trying to capture the essence of their shape. I wanted ti use very few lines and keep to simple, two-dimensional shading.

These sketches were part of Carla Sonheim’s Y is For Yellow course that I’ve been participating in. It’s a really wonderful DIY online program that you can work through at your own pace.

I had such fun playing with these sketches. Eyes closed for some, non-dominant hand for others. A bit of shading with just quick finger smears or water colour pencil crayons.I really love the shape of the Marabou Stork’s long, voluptuous beak.

This cute little scruffy terrier was such fun to sketch, though I really found it hard to stick to simple lines only. Somehow his fluffiness made me really want to use shading and a busier line. Given this strong pull that I felt to complicate (evident in my second sketch below), I'm really happy with the way the simple "smudge" sketch turned out!

Juggling parenting and making art is still such a struggle for me, even now that my son is 7 years old. I hear this is a common struggle for artist moms. Apparently less so for artist dads (Thanks, Patriarchy).

My Magazine Paper Collages displayed here are almost all gifted to loved ones, sold, or kept for my personal collection. But I wanted to share the series and the story behind it because they will always hold special meaning for me. They were the first artworks that I had the courage to try after I unexpectedly lost 80% of my vision in 2013.

These hyenas were such fun. Focusing on the “horizon line” of their backs, I really noticed how interesting their body shape is, and just how much character is conveyed in that single slope-y line of the hyena’s spine!