There is no road map for finding ones passion(s) in life. It is a solitary path that leads us deep inside our soul’s engine room guided by our intuition that could be fed by our inner vision and our inner voice. Of all the journeys that swing us around it is no doubt the inner journey that is most precious. It is a journey without any fixed terminus for while we are at it the landscape changes continuously, we change, the energies in and around us change and the ''seasons'' change, the ''seasons'' that come in so many different hues on so many different levels and with it the light changes too!
It was in the ‘sandwich years’ of my life as I call it – in between two marriages – that something rather remarkable began to unfold. It was for the first time that I had realized that I could do it all alone and that sprouted an enormous freedom in me which is a prerequisite for being a creative being – a visual artist at that. Of all the manifold techniques one can choose from I had taken to soldering: in the beginning it was small art objects and jewelry that grew out into wall hangings and assemblages although I had been educated in graphic designing. The only thing I knew at that point was that I wanted to make order out of chaos, beauty out of ugliness, harmony out of discord. To realize this I was using any kind of materials – object trouvé mostly – to give the beauty that I intended shape, applying a certain solder-technique that I had developed I wrought things together with a never waning passion.
One day while I was at work in my studio a neighbor called in asking me with trembling voice if I would know a way how to get her broken family heirloom - a porcelain teacup - back into one piece. When she opened the little parcel various shards came out of what I could determine had once been a Meissen teacup – Meissen porcelain or Meissen china is the first European hard-paste porcelain that was developed from 1708. I promised that I would look into it. Days later I looked at the shards again and put them on my soldering board. Suddenly something took over from me while I saw my hands grasping for tin, solder fluid and a soldering iron. I then took out a ‘mabe pearl’ from the collection of semiprecious stones and pearls that I had collected. From that moment on my memory goes blank. When I ‘came around’ a brooch had materialized staring me straight in the face. I was surprised and worried at the same time. Although it was quite beautiful how would I explain this outcome to the dear lady neighbor? Next moment my sense for reality began to prevail and urged me into action. When I presented a brooch to her, instead of a mended teacup, she produced the most unexpected reaction. She exclaimed:’’ Oh my, this is so beautiful, how much do I owe you for this?’’ By the time I got through to her that no exchange of money was involved she had taken me to a Chinese chest from where she took out a wooden box. When she opened the box it was full with porcelain shards and I asked in amazement what had taken place knowing very well that Holland is not an earthquake prone part of the world. With some trepidation she then confessed that she had been suffering from shakiness for many years but that this had never stopped her from taking out the China when enjoying her tea seeing pieces falling to shatters time and again. She then handed me the box making me promise to create beauty from it.
This strange accumulation of events launched me into a new passion and onto a next leg of my career and in times to come it would take me – but sometimes only my work – to places as far as the US, Greece, France, Denmark, Britain, Germany, India and Japan. Yet it started all fairly simple at an indoors-stall of an Amsterdam antiques market where I began to sell the new designs – bracelets, brooches, rings, earrings, etc. It soon attracted a lot of people with among them experts from Sotheby’s and Christies who bought 4, 5 pieces at the time. I was simply delighted and began to see different horizons. After half a year I had found my way into small art galleries. I added decorative boxes, small mirrors and Judaica – an array of objects used by Jews for ritual purposes – to the collection and soon my work found its way into museum shops such as the National Museum in Amsterdam, Jewish Historical Museum and the Shop of the Portuguese Synagogue. I also began to receive private assignments. All along I did pose the question to myself if people perhaps took pity on me: an artist who was capable of breaking precious antique porcelain in order to put it back together again shaping something new??? Well, I have to confess that the porcelain that I used was damaged to such an extent that it had lost its market value anyway and that by doing what I did I gave it in fact a new lease of life.
The artist supposedly sees through all the facades.
Other synchronicities began to take place. When one day I walked into the Shop of the Portuguese Synagogue an American couple that was talking to the shop attendant stopped me saying that they were just discussing importing my work to the United States. When I attended my own exhibitions in galleries I more and more found people approaching me for a next show elsewhere.
Art knows no boarders and by shaping my thoughts around that awareness the energy began to follow and to flow steering me straight into a pocket of the world where my longings had been for so long and where I in fact had lived too: Greece.
It was on a journey back from the island of Paros – where I had become a member of IPAC (International Paros Art Circle) – arriving in Athens with a remainder of work. Two streets away from the small Plaka hotel where I often stayed – Plaka is a neighborhood in downtown Athens – I walked into Zygos Galleries – the oldest gallery in town – and bumped into its owner who was difficult to avoid being broader than he was tall. I showed him some of the work and a spark hit immediately. I signed a contract with him for 3 months that was going to extend to over one year.
Through another Greek contact that I had met in an umbrella shop in Amsterdam – an umbrella & a Greek is a great novelty I may add – I wound up on the Cycladic island of Kea where a gallery owner offered me a long-weekend exhibition. I argued with him that a-long-weekend seemed to be a rather short period but he said: ‘’you will see!”
The gallery was situated in a picturesque island house right on the edge of a small yachting/fisherman’s harbor named Vourkari. On the Friday evenings the harbor usually got overcrowded with weekend yachting people from Athens. My work didn’t even last till the Sunday evening; it had all gone by Sunday afternoon.
I guess that the point I am trying to make here is that when one focuses ones attention on something one always gets more of it, it’s a metaphysical law that comes down to the fact that energy follows thought. It is a very adequate thing to apply in life.
Although porcelain has remained one of the materials that I love working with in my ‘assemblages’ many more materials have been added since and more will come and others will go as it is a continuous play with the inner perception and the environment in which we exist. With my permanent move to Southern France different perceptions are surfacing that invite different materials to use. Rocks, plywood, feathers, pottery shards, berry’s, leaf, wire, jute…nothing is catalogued.
Sometimes one meets artist-soul-mates which happened to me lately and it can be cause for a mini-inner-eruption, it opens up new or forgotten alley ways. My eyes where suddenly fixated on the 3-dimensional work of a Greek artist that I felt so attracted to like I had been part of the process myself.
A few days later I made contact with the artist and she expressed similar feelings when she saw my work. For quite a while I had been doubtful whether I would pick up a soldering iron ever again until that magical moment. I knew then that it wasn’t over at all. On a different level there lies a fast unexcavated territory that is in dire need of exploration.
It is something that others can stir in you!
