Academie voor beeldende kunsten St Joost, Breda
Jan van Eyck academie, Maastricht
Stedelijk Museum Schiedam
de Tiendschuur, Weert
het Kruithuis, 's Hertogenbosch
Museum de Markiezenhof, Bergen op Zoom
Jan Cunen centrum, Oss
Museum de Lakenhal, Leiden
Gallerie Grafiker, Haarlem
Nieuw Perspectief, Amsterdam
Gallerie Zero, Tilburg
Gallerie Naber, Groningen
Gallerie Jan van Hoof, 's Hertogenbosch
VormVast, Breda
NBKS, Oirschot
Living Art, Amsterdam
Dutch Art Fair, Amsterdam
Dutch Art Fair, Rotterdam
Provincie huis, 's Hertogenbosch
work in the collections of the Government, Province, Countys, Municipalities, Art Institutions, Companies and Art collectors.
born: Meerssen 1950
AboutMe
This is what MATILDE BALATTI, Art Curator in Italy, wrote in the beginning of 2019.
When art connects with technology, a real revolution takes place.
Never before these days Technology has been used as a support of art exhibitions and even more rarely as the actual means and keeping a highly sensitive approach that hits the spectator is not easy.
The artist CatDogville paints using the touchscreen on a high definition tablet without losing the great humanity that characterises her works and holds the spectators attention.
All the subjects are covered with a painterly touch as well as a dramatic one, conveying a certain darkness and mystery.
The characters represented in Drinkingthenightaway, Istanbul and Underground are caught immobile, as if the artist surprised them during a daily activity. The same figures look at the spectator, they seem to include him in the scene and interrogate him with suspicious eyes.
What do they want to know?
In the same way the dark and isolated landscapes araouse uncertainty and worry, like the house in the painting Detroit, that could be abandoned i fit wasn’t for the light inside
Many questions come to the viewer’s mind: who is in this house? Why is the painter there?
Is it safe?
The liveliness of colours, their unnatural use and the spontaneity of the composition, recall the Fauves painters, who have redifined contemporary art from the beginning of the XX century by revolutionizing the conventional rules and going beyond the perfect shapes in favour of a deeper emotionality in the artwork.
If on one side, we can find answers to the enigmatic art by CatDogville by looking at past artists, on the other side the extreme variaty of subjects is explained by the inspiration taken from various aspects of reality (pictures, images on the internet and from daily life that are always remodelled according to the artists sensitivity.
This sensitivity reveals a great ability to observe not only from a perceivable point of view but also through the emotional participation of the artist.
The bold use of colours is a witness to the communicative act spread by the artist, who does not want to reproduce the world how it is, but a world where the physical perception is strongly connected to the emotional one.
In CatDogville art the subject isn’t a mere representation of the external, which is projected on a deeper level of consciousness and contains a piece of the artist’s soul, her view on the world that we are grateful she shares with the public.
Born in the Netherlands in 1950, now living in Sweden.
I have been drawing since i was a child, drawing is my most important tool.
Started as an artist in the eighties.
In the nineties, I became an actor for 15 years.
Moving to Sweden in 2014 made me want to work again as a painter. I missed painting and drawing. The ipad gave me an opportunity to work again without the physical difficulties I would have had painting in real which is difficult for me nowadays.
All came together, paint was never the material i really liked. Pencil, dry needle etching, scratching etc was always my preferred way of expressing myself.
The surface of the ipad is hard!
I can paint with a pencil!
In the early days I was inspired by Cy Twombly, Pollock, Kirkeby, Baselitz and many others. At the moment I find myself looking at works of Munch, Veuillard, Hopper and Bonnard but also to the work of contemporary artists like Daniel Richter and Peter Doig and many nowadays painters.
Mostly my work starts with an image I have found on internet or things I photographed myself. I make a quick sketch and see if it is interesting to go on with. The photographic element Is usually just a part of my painting and a part of the composition. I have trouble to draw out of my head. This mentioned, I try to forget the photograph and use my sketch as a start to go on with.
The sense of light, the mood, the colours, the feeling of a painting doesn't come easily, it appears by working, experience and chance and... every day.
Birgitt
©2019CatDogville