1009words, 5min read
Last entry in my series of blogs featuring earlier art projects of mine. Earlier post within this trip down memory lane include:
- Botanical Family
- Nachttuin
- Moederliefde
- Layers of Spring
- Catalonia
- Hortus by Night
- Tucson
- Experiments in collage
And today it is time to revisit my first art project ever: Majorelle.
My visit to Le Jardin Majorelle in 2016 started a three year journey through botanical photographs, drawings and paintings, patterns and fabrics, scarves and jewellery, cushions and stationery, and eventually bringing it all together in my Majorelle Universe at the Eindhoven Maker Faire in September 2019.
Le Jardin Majorelle
Last summer I analysed my earlier art projects and their significance within my personal and professional journey. This is what I wrote about Majorelle:
If you want to make a difference in the art world, you make sure you have an artist statement. At least, that’s what I read in the booklet “Navigating the Art World,” published by the prestigious Delphian Gallery in 2020, which has been awarded five stars by artists worldwide. In 2020, I really wanted to make a difference with my art, so I wrote an artist statement. The most important questions you answer in that statement are: What do you make and why? What I made was pretty clear from the start: abstract botanical drawings, collages, and paintings. And when I finally wanted to change that, my art teacher was very resolute: “If there’s ANYTHING clear in your art practice, then you accept it with gratitude; there’s already enough unclear.” Clear. Abstract botanical work, then. But why?
Why, why, why. I think I’ve had twenty different artist statements in five years, with just as many different whys. And just as many convictions about why I couldn’t find my why. Was it because I was self-taught and missed a very important memo? Was it perhaps that I didn’t have a 1/3 Human Design profile (like all visual artists who create even remotely interesting work), but a 4/6? Was it my lack of engagement with a world that, after more than thirty years, was starting to tire me out? Just like the art world itself, incidentally, which led me to recalcitrantly post “My artist statement is that I don’t have an artist statement” on my website for a while?
Paintings
Now, five years later and in the midst of my “connecting the dots” period (thank God, finally in my 6-line!), my new artist statement from May 2025 made me want to revisit that question of why and not just settle for the first inspiration. In search of my why, I felt compelled to return to my very first series of paintings, the five Majorelles. Why did I want to paint them? What was it that had so captivated me there in that Majorelle garden that I wouldn’t let it go? What made me want to keep working on it and recreate it so I could continue to surround myself with it? What was it I didn’t know from my own life up until then, and why did I have to travel to Africa to discover it? The answer turned out to be: safety.
Patterns and fabrics
I still remember how I described it when I got home and couldn’t stop talking about Morocco, and especially about the Majorelle garden: “Relaxing yet energetic. Calming yet full of inspiration.” My mother told me to stop raving about Africa: “Stop it, you’re always talking about it!” Only now do I understand why she couldn’t stand it. A week in another culture, on another continent, among people whose language I didn’t speak, had given me something essential that she hadn’t been able to offer me for thirty years: a safe and regulated nervous system.
Although I couldn’t put it into words at the time, my body felt that it was something special, something not to be taken for granted, something to return to, something to keep finding. My fastest way back then turned out to be to transform the colours and botanical shapes that Africa had given me into paintings. To transform those paintings into fabric patterns and print them on everything I could find, thus surrounding myself with my own Majorelle Universe. Modelled by Yayoi Kusama with her polka-dot universe, I created a colourful world of my own in which I could immerse myself and unwind, observing myself without any danger. [Note: being yourself or articulating normal human needs within a narcissistic family system ALWAYS leads to degradation and ridicule—for a child that can be experienced as life-threatening, because if your parents reject you, who will look after you?]
Silk scarves and glass jewels
I kept going until I could decorate an entire booth in Majorelle style, as I did at the Eindhoven Maker Faire in 2019. Fabrics were transformed by the meter into curtains, dresses, pants and tops, silk scarves, canvas cushion covers, greeting cards, postcards, and, in collaboration with other creative entrepreneurs, rugs and jewelry.
Cushions and stationery
Why, why, why. Safety, safety, safety. Even before my brain understood what had been lacking in my life all those years, my body sensed it perfectly. Because the beautiful thing is: all healing (and growth) begins with safety. If you don’t feel safe, you can’t change behavior, discover patterns, or look at yourself without judgment. So I kept talking about that visit to Africa, and now I understand why. My life changed there in more ways than one. I already understood things there in 2016 that I can only put into words and put into perspective now, almost ten years later. Back then, I wrote: Africa gives me back my body. That was truer than I could ever have imagined.
Majorelle Universe
Hope you enjoyed this series of blogs featuring earlier series of works. Next year I will add a blog about my art project Jungle Dreams (finished in 2025) and one featuring my newest body of work Botaniska, which I’m still working on as we speak.