How did you become an artist?
I did a three-day online course! … No I didn’t. From an early age on I felt it was my destiny for me to become a creator, in any shape or form. Attending the Royal Academy in The Hague was my only goal when I was in High school. At the age of 19, I was accepted into the academy where I studied design. I graduated in 1994 and started to work as a designer – my job until 2015. A burnout made me stop and I started to make art. The first years were about learning everything (again). At present, I work as an artist full time.
Tell us more about the process of making your work?
It took me a while to unlearn the designer habits I had gathered for 25 years. I came to realize a designer’s mind and an artist’s mind don’t function the same. As a designer, I often had to start working from a problem. Now, as an artist, I create the problems. I no longer sketch or design my art. No! My artworks are born in my hands. I even try not to think which is pretty hard for an overthinker. But thinking kills the work. But I digress… in making art, regardless of material or medium, there is always a returning process. I just can not ignore or cheat my way around it!
It is a three-phased process:
1. create with all the energy, frustrations, emotions that manifest themselves at that time.
2. destroy and deconstruct what I did and, most importantly, enjoying that stage and again, don’t think, but feel the moves, feel the hammer smash, feel the saw cut, let the knife swirl.
3. And then, with calm and grace, I put it together again.
My passion for wood happened accidentally. I needed a round frame for one of my objects. I asked my boyfriend if he could make one from an old Drawing Board.
What fascinates you about working with wood?
My passion for wood happened accidentally. I needed a round frame for one of my objects. I asked my boyfriend if he could make one from an old Drawing Board. I almost never buy materials for my work because I simply don’t have the resources, so I have to do with anything I can find. The drawing board was too small to cut the circle in one go so my boyfriend had to construct the circle from several parts. When he called me to show the result I saw the offcuts on the floor and I fell in love with these weird shapes. For days I played with them until finally my first „perfect interrupted circle“ was born. Ever since then I work with wood I find at home and at building sites. Lately, I’m very lucky as across my studio a church is being renovated into a hotel and all the wood that comes from there is like winning the lottery! Wood gives me freedom in shape. I had a constant fight with paper and canvas, always needing support and that really annoys me. Wood is also touchable. I love for people to feel my art; not just look at it but feel the structure(s), the weight, and smell the burnt wood.
What makes you dream?
Becoming more than an emerging artist, my art all over the world (I made a start, works of mine can be found in Europe, the USA, and Russia). I am rather ambitious to become more than just Yvette.
What is bliss?
Love and recognition.
Just Yvette – www.just-yvette.com