Interview
Marianne van den Heuvel
Marianne van den Heuvel was born into the world of music but she discovered that her true soul was fine art. She made a rigorous step, put her violin bow aside to pick up a paintbrush. The source stayed the same, her artistic soul. “As a young violinist, winning my first audition for a job in a Dutch orchestra, I already knew it would be a hard ride to get to my pension here. These are not nice circumstances to make art in. The year, 2013 was the time I decided to say goodbye. A strange time for me started. A time of which I now can say, was a transition time. In 2020, I picked up a brush and that was it. I was home. Everything inside me began to vibrate. I became enormously happy and started to create and learn, learn and create and whatever will happen, this is me.” Watercolor is her medium. Van den Heuvel's creations are recognizable by the vibrant colors she uses. Vibrant as the burst of life itself with the energy of pigments meeting water. Also experimenting with surfaces as synthetic paper or watercolor on canvas, because: what if? “I love to push towards extremes and see what happens.”
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“As a young child, my kindergarten teacher noticed that I had a good memory for music and learned the songs very quickly. She mentioned this to my mother who decided to start developing this talent. As I was the youngest of six children, my mother had gained more free time to guide me. From that moment on, my daily study began at 4 years old. I started with playing a sopranino flute, the smallest of the wooden flutes. You can compare it with the piccolo. My playing progressed very quickly so I was asked to play in the church at Christmas. This was very intimidating to me still being so very young.
At 6 years old, I went to primary school and started to play the violin. Again a choice of my mother. I am very grateful for her perseverance because I wouldn't be where I am right now, but I wasn't happy with this choice and also having to study daily. I grew up in a small village with a lot of farmers, 25 km southeast of Amsterdam. In the 70’s it wasn't common to play the violin as a little child. I always kept it a secret because once the word was out, the fun time at school was gone. Children wouldn't understand and start nagging me and with it I can tell you, with the upbringing I had, I started to grow a firm backbone.
In high school, with the change of a violin teacher who also taught at the Conservatory, I finally started to have fun with playing the violin which led me to study at the Conservatory and become a professional violinist. The other thing that happened in high school was the choice to major in art, which I did. That was a wonderful time, getting to know different art techniques and having assignments in still life on large papers and experiment with all kind of colors, and watercolor! It felt like freedom, a freedom I never gave a second thought because of my other creative development, through the violin. The thing I promised myself at that time was that one day, I would come back to further explore watercolor.
I worked in professional orchestras in the Netherlands for almost 30 years. At some point, I had the chance to quit my job. You would think that it is a creative job and you are also an artist but playing in an orchestra as a tutti violin player, which means, you are one of the group, there is nothing creative about it. No freedom. You play the music in front of you in time with the whole orchestra and in the way the conductor likes to have it. In the end, I was so bored and started to explore many different things. It was Covid-19 that brought watercolor back into my life. No better moment for this. I started painting and found my true art skin. That also brings me at a very interesting point in my life, making a new career at 58. It's amazing how much I am learning and stretching myself out of my comfort zone but I have nothing to lose, only to win.”
What inspires you?
“Light, the effect of light on colors and shapes, those things inspire me. Looking up in the sky where you see the shape of large clouds. Preferably with the sun behind it so a golden edge is visible. Shapes that change and turn into different shapes. Faces you can see all of a sudden. Those kind of things. I also look at that at the trunks of trees. Sometimes you can see faces in them too. Together with that, it's also very intuitive and goes hand in hand with feelings. A feeling of an atmosphere of quietness. A grey sky in wintertime that could bring snow and brings an atmosphere of barely hearing any sound outside. My high school was a bike ride of 10 km to school in the morning and back, the same ride in the evening. Everyday, come rain or shine, so to say. I had a lot of time to think and watch during those rides. The Walkman didn't even exist so the only music I heard was the music I memorized from the songs on the radio. My present inspiration is completely intuitive. I try to release what I feel in my soul. Sometimes, it leads me to create an abstract and other times it's something different. Though I love to watch art by different artists, I also try to limit it because I get easily intimidated and influenced.”
What themes do you pursue? Is there an underlying message in your work?
“A theme I like to address is 'free yourself.' I love talking to people who walk by my stand at an art market or fair and I notice so much suppression. Picasso has a beautiful saying about this: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” I hear the most wonderful stories of people who create art themselves but have all kinds of restrictions not to pursue it any further. Or limiting beliefs that you have to have gone to an art school before you can become an artist. Art is a gift from God to the human kind, and artists are the messengers of this. I hope my art can ignite just that little spark of hope, happiness, and relaxation with someone who is touched by it. That makes me very grateful. I also see and talk to people who have built this firm wall of concrete around them and don't allow themselves anymore to just enjoy something beautiful and to let that in.”
How would you describe your work?
“Though I love realism and find it very skillful, I don't like to work like that. I admire people who can and work like that but it's a lot of time put into technique and skill and before you know it, you have lost your soul. I like to explore the edges of abstract in soft as well as in harsh edges, colors that touch each other that pushes the viewer to stretch his mind. My work is very colorful or vibrant because colors open my soul and the moment I see them on the paper, my inner child starts to play intuitively.”
Which artists influence you most?
“It also wasn't before high school that I became aware of the impressionism, and that's all about atmosphere, which is my thing. Of course, Monet is my hero. The different paintings he has made of the Cathedral of Rouen at all those different hours of the day. I can study those paintings for hours and still be amazed by the way he looks and puts that into paint. And Degas is also someone I admire very much. The delicacy of the tutus of the ballerinas together with the powdery colors. It's such a nice impression of those days and the light they used on stage. Dali, I admire for his fantasy. So, I tend to look back for influencing more than to my contemporary colleagues. To be quite honest, when I have a look at what seems to sell at online art galleries, most of the work I don't get. There are of course exceptions.”
“Art is a gift from God to the human kind, and artists are the messengers of this. I hope my art can ignite just that little spark of hope, happiness, relaxation with someone who is touched by it.”
What is your creative process like?
“Ideas come and go. The other day, I did a workshop on how to make a fresco. It’s an art technique I admire very much. From that workshop, I learned that I won’t pursue making fresco's but immediately started wondering how I can achieve maybe a similar effect with watercolor. So that's one idea. The list goes on an on. I limit myself in having watercolor as my medium but on top of that, or together with it there is lots to experiment and explore. I like organic shapes and love to experiment with fabric, texture paste and just see what will happen. The last experiment is watercolor combined with wool. I nourish my healthy way of curiousness and with that the first question always as; 'what if...' After that my solid backbone is there for me and makes me feel: 'I have nothing to lose, so go for it and see what happens.’”
What is an artist’s role in society and how do you see that evolving?
“My firm belief is that the role of an artist is a peace-maker. That might be a very bold statement but it holds truth in it. Art is made with the right brain, this side of the brain where the sensing, feeling, imagination, creation etc. is. It's not judging and not logical. It's also this side of the brain that is almost not developed at school. If you look at an IQ-test, the majority is left brain what's tested. A long time scientists had the belief and also called it like that, that the left brain is the dominant one and the right the sub-dominant. As if you could live perfectly also without it. It’s crazy to believe. Those days are gone, luckily. It's also proved that every time you look at something beautiful, your brain is making new neurological paths which are very healthy to the brain and so for us. Let's focus on the right brain, make beautiful art, support the ones that fulfill this role and create peace.”
