A new body of work

written on 18 august 2022 and sent as a newsletter

Back to Oil Painting: A New Series in the Making

I’ve been thinking a lot about painting lately, and how I haven’t been doing what I love the most. A fresh start came right after the holiday for me, as I finished a lot of client work before and suddenly had the whole month to create new work. 

As always with a new painting I get kind of scared in the beginning. My sketching process already takes a lot of planning, since I work from digitally enhanced photographs that I stage myself. Those photographs give me ideas about colour, composition but still leave enough room for change. That process always gets me out of my comfort zone the most, as it’s mostly intuitively and I look at colours and textures that I like. Even though you can just throw away the sketch, it still feels final when I make something. 

Timing was perfect, as I just brought six original oil paintings to Bunk hotels in Utrecht for an exhibition until the end of september. The studio was empty and I could paint with a fresh mind. 

Solo exhibition ‘a study on intimacy’ in Bunk Hotels in Utrecht

She doesn’t have a name yet, and I think she’ll only get one when I finish painting her siblings. She feels finished, but she might change a little bit yet to change the context of this new series and body of work. She’ll get a story in a few months. 

I think I finally accepted I work intuitively and without a concept before I paint - instead of giving more to the story I overthink it and it makes the painting worse. That doesn’t mean they don’t have stories, it just means it takes more time for them to develop. They grow.

For now she’s made of colours and textures and is finding the beginning of her story. I’m painting the next one as we speak and I think together they already make a good match.

I’m glad I’m painting again. 

- Roxy 

PS: If you want to see every part of this painting’s process, you can check out the video below.