Bikkel Artist

I work from an idea that touches me. A memory, an event, a feeling, an image that presents itself. I never begin from a style or a prescribed colour palette. I search for my own way of shaping what moves me — in painting, glass or metal.

I work quickly, directly and intensely. Sometimes a painting is created in a single day, because the impulse is clear and I want to follow it. I work from life, from old photographs of Curaçao, from memories, from what stands before me and what I feel in that moment.

When I see a work again years later, I recognise the emotion that led me to create it. Even if the work feels dated, I respect the moment in which it came into being. My work forms a timeline of my life.

My glass works carry my Curaçao memories: colour, light, water, movement. My paintings carry my softness, my pain, my longing — and later my return to colour, to strength, to happiness.

For many years I painted from sorrow. It was a way of processing, a way of surviving. When colour returned to my work, I realised that I had returned to myself.

The grid in my paintings is not a stylistic device but a conversation. It is my way of speaking about longing, about distance, about what remains and what disappears.