My Atelier
After living twenty-six years in the village Oude Wetering, and being homeless for a year, I eventually found my place in Haarlem. A lovely city from which I daily travel to my study in Amsterdam. Although it is just a fifteen minutes travel from center to center the big difference in pace of living makes that I can feel at ease in Haarlem. Therefor it really feels like home.
After living up and on in several spots I eventually could rent an apartment for a longer time. Slowly it became to feel really like “my house” and I decorated it to my wishes. So the living room became an atelier in which I can work on school and other jobs. Next to that there is a small bedroom where I try not to work..
Totally in the back there is a small kitchen in which I tried to make it feel like a fresh and vibrant place again. It is mostly where my morning starts with making a slow brewed cappuccino out of my one of my biggest prides: a La Pavoni.
Most of the apartment is decorated with parts that I call my small projects. It mostly is all about functionality and the need for some storage or to showcase some older projects because I’m still proud on them.
Designer by day, Signpainter by night
As I am a designer and not a real art person the ideas for my work mostly come from a functional perspective. Inspired by the function aspect of something I design the right form for it. Therefor archives containing vintage clothing, graphics, photographs and literature are for me the for me the places to get inspired by. They form for the great good to get inspired by, and create into contemporary aesthetic.
When I searched for getting inspiration for some signpainting, I found a book which linked the neotraditional style of tattooing to the older tattoos. Tattoos that sailors got on their duties when being months away from home, reading about the meaning and thoughts about them it became really clear that is was also a form of communication. Most of them were merely putten on the skin for showing achievements rather than aesthetic.
Seeing contemporary tattoo-artist making the style their own and make then more bespoke now they created a new kind of graphic movement. The tattoos are now rather functional as personal memory then achievements people got.
But when it comes to graphics it keeps still be inspiring. Therefor I knew it wouldn’t stick to only get some inspiration as it is an aesthetic I have always been interested about. Therefor I decided to design some ink myself…
As I didn’t serve a duty on a ship that is sailing out for months I thought it would be kind of lame to put something on my body that doesn’t have a remembrance to something. And as I am not really keen on putting some ink into my skin, as I don’t believe it really fits me, I decided to put it on my wall instead.
Searched for a older frame that would fit such kind of artwork. As it for me still needed to create function I decided to make an artwork that described my daily occupation.
As I work on daily basis as a designer within the fashion industry and paint signs and windows mainly in the evening and weekend hours this sentence describes me best. As in traditional tattoos flag or borders are used to put sentences on, I referred to this by putting the sentence on a tool I use on a daily basis when designing.