This semester was very different than other semesters, so quite a few things had to be turned around. It took me some time to adjust but I have found my way in the end. I felt very restricted at first, all the online classes made me less open minded. It would turn down my mood to create. Somehow at some point I found a rhythm which worked for me. I had much more time on my hands, and started to do all the things I never had the time for before the pandemic. I started experimenting with clay, painting more, reading more and most importantly reflecting more. I had so much time to reflect that I found myself making new goals everyday. This was also tiring sometimes but it is what kept me going. I became very openminded and all the experimenting with new materials made me very inspired to use it in my photographic projects. Also to not restrict myself to just photography; I started to also focus on interior design, what I could make myself for inside my home and became very excited to create. I feel like I usually already experiment a lot in my work, but I seem to always struggle with finding time to get to know new materials, I am always in some kind of rush. This past semester I was able to take time to experiment, so it has been a different way of experimenting and I feel it brought me closer to who I am as an artist.

There is one theme that comes back through all the projects I did this semester. Abstraction. Works from Cecily Kahn were a very important inspiration for me during this process. I realised that I had an urge to make things more simple. Maybe this has to do with the situation we are in right now. I feel like this has been a predominant theme in my work. I was very intuitive in the approach of this theme, like there was a need of just letting things happen. I think this is very psychological and I have this semester come to the realisation that my work in general is quite psychological. The starting point is always something I think or feel and have a lot of questions about. A weird dream, for example, can be a starting point for me or when I felt uncomfortable with people coming in my personal space, then I question; why? How? What can I do about this? What are things I could research on this topic? These questions open up the thought process to, eventually, a project.

Questioning is a very important part of my process. Questioning and reading about the topic. I often don’t have one set opinion about a topic I work with, it most of the time stays open. It’s a constant search to answers of questions I will most likely never get answers to. So for me the research phase is very much about reading, hearing and seeing different opinions. So that I can form some kind of platform about the topic which has a lot of variety. Books have been really important for me the past semester, there is one book I was reading about pitfalls which clarified many thoughts I had. The book is called Reinventing your life by Jeffrey Young and Janet Klosko. These steps are very important in my work. I feel like my work is a reflection of a constant search to being the best version of me I can be.