As an artist, one can be inspired by many things or people or an artist. For a long time, my hero was Robert Rauschenberg. I could get lost in flakes and edges of found footage he assembled. Since my move to Canada, I broke loose from collage. One afternoon I found myself with nose to window at Clint Roenisch art gallery in Toronto. The gallerist and artist where setting up the show. I had to keep patience until the opening. Shoes where placed side by side at the entrance. Bare foot, I walked over carpets and cardboard. Carefully avoiding objects that looked like bones, and plates of food. Etchings an paintings seemed to be singing on the walls. The artist was caring for his work, by connecting the art pieces with his guests. He was wearing Bhuddist clothes, had an Italian face with a karate ponytail. It worked, I found myself in a new dimension. In the drawings, energy lines connected, or just blurted out of portraits. “Can you see these energy lines?” I asked. “No”, was his reply. “I do spend hours a day to meditate.” And so it was, that Massimo Guerrera kept his secret of the unseen.

For the “Homage” group show, I selected two tree barks that I sanded inside and out. The tree was hit by lightening, one part is very light like cork. The inner part I primed and then made a painting in it with charcoal, pencil and acrylics. The end result is new, as it combines drawing, painting and sculpture. The shape is somehow comfortable. Your arm fits around it as the base rests on your hip.

Iris Kiewiet, “My Room”, Acrylics on canvas, 2009, 4 X 4ft / 122 X 122 cm

Iris Kiewiet, “Peeled Orange”, Acrylics on canvas, 2008, 35X58″

Iris Kiewiet, “Awake”, Acrylics on canvas, 2007, 96 X 60″

Emerging as an Artist with The Journey

The growth that came with letting go.

After finishing the Arts Academy, ‘Minerva in Groningen The Netherlands, my art developed into a very narrative and mythical style. I started with collages, hand made and later on using Adobe Photoshop to layer them digitally. The size of a collage is limited to the used footage that comes from magazines and old books. I felt that there was a sense of hiding by working that small. I started to wish I could make large artwork. This was a transition that I could not make. I sat around the table with my coach Ingrid Dassen and we came to the conclusion that besides the ‘how to do it’ there was probably a need for personal growth that was inner twined with it. I did not know how to proceed, other then to accept, for that time, I did not know. And that gave the process of how to upscale my work, a little mysterie.

That same year, in 2003, I attended my very first Journey Intensive weekend, with Brandon Bays, in Eindhoven The Netherlands. I found a part of myself that I had hidden away. Back in my studio, I didn’t come loose yet until a deadline for a solo exhibition in Rotterdam gallery “BLIK” was getting closer. I set up huge cardboard panels and had all the acrylics I needed. This was the time to do it. To make large artwork. And I conquered the blank surface. It was the Journey process that helped me do it. Because I had experienced the going inward, and then the dialoging with people involved, I knew how to get into the moment and the meditation that wanted to take shape and form, and then start the dialog with the canvas. The big size canvas really helped to have a clear dialog. As if the canvas could say it wanted some yellow at the left upper corner. When I start a new work, I do not know what it is that I will paint. It is staying open and ‘listening’ to the image what it wants to look like. Having done The Journey made me able to stay open, feel, hear and reflect that with paint. My studio time became apprehensive, fulfilling.

Art is connected with who you are. The Journey helps to uncover the blocks that keep you from being your true self. A painting or drawing shows how I am doing. I can see this and see the stages as time passes. The hurt, the love, the anger, the innocence. This was a blessing when I went through the Journey Practitioners Program. My paintings formed a mirror for me and an anchor when so much was changing in me and around me. An aspect that kept coming up is that a part of the painting, it could be a figure or an arm or background, would turn out blue. A kind of blue that was etherical, as if this part wasn’t really here. Saintly, but with a hurt. It puzzeled me why I could not paint a warm, giving, filling image. The work was always spacious, as if you could fall into it. Tranquil, maybe even distant. It took some time. And in one painting, ‘Peeled Orange’ 2008, the climax played out. I realised that in my paintings, I was giving full authority to ‘what was there’, ‘what wanted to be painted’. And I didn’t like where this specific painting was going. The figure was in an environment that was bare, empty, hungry. I very consiously chose to change the outcome. I was dressing the figure, painting food in the dishes. This had a direct impact on my personal life. At that time my family and I where without a home for a month. The next day, after having painted the orange parts, we had an offer to move into my studio apartment, because the main renter had to give up the lease. The paintings I made after that, where more and more grounded, alife and abundant.

‘Create, paint, things will be ok.’ This line came into my awareness repetitavely, before I had a stable studio. And I still ‘hear’ it when I am all caught up in what should happen. And that I can’t paint because we have to pay the bills. This is not true. From my own experience I can say that I am taken care of when I am the artist. It is as if the Universe is replying when I dare let go and create. A phonecall, an email, money coming into my account. Being caught in should does, is still coming up. It is unbeleivable how much STUFF can come in the way between me and my studio time. I put it there, or I allow it to be of matter. Try it. Even if you can’t paint. Make a drawing, dance or sing a song, in the moment where you are most worried. Trust and let yourself free to feel joy, fulfilment. I have a dear friend who had just had a very rough time in hospital with the HIV virus. He wanted his own appartment, his own home, and was very afraid. I asked him, ‘what is the worst that could happen’. He said, ‘that I am not able to pay the bills.’ I was stunned, ‘aren’t you afraid something might happen and you are alone in your home, even dying without someone being there’? He replied that he wasn’t afraid of that at all, he had faced death several times in the hospital. ‘No big deal’. And he has his own appartment now, and is the head of a team of 17 people at work. What does that have to do with painting? Well, creating, being an artist, is a life quality, of daring to live out your potential and your dreams. How simple they might seem.

My parents have blessed me with their love for me and freedom in what I wanted ‘to become’. An artist attitude is what developed out of that. My parents where no artists in the literal sense. My mother sowed our cloths and my father grew our food in the veggie garden, also carpeting and fixing around the house. That gave me the knowing that you can make things yourself. Hands on. My art is therefor very close to me, an organic process, very real. It is funny how many ideas excist about artists. I play with it when it comes up. At parties, ‘What is it you do?’ ‘I am an artist’. ‘And what do you do for a living?’ “I make art’. And then observing these seconds that the other person needs to realise an artist can be a job. Another misunderstanding about art is that is is ‘out of the pocket’. One of my collectors is a lawyer and had a big painting I made in 2004 above his desk. He said that before, a client of the other party would come in and the lawyer would yell he would brake him in this tryal, would devour him in court. And that since the painting is up, they talk about the female body parts they see in the painting, yes there is some nudity. And have a completely different dynamic in the office. Another misunderstanding about making art is that it has to be the right time. Well, live happens and happens fast. I met a coffe salesman who said that some day he would pick up painting again. I replied, ‘how about this afternoon?’ And I could see the shock going through him physically. He had been projecting into the future ever since starting his family and his company. And now he was experiencing how it would be, if he would take some time, today. Having this artist attitude, makes me see wonderful thing all around me, enjoying images in other people, in events, in nature. It creates the space to paint, even as a young mother. I get a lot of assumptions that now I am not able to paint, with the kids. Well, the children are such a rich part of my life, that it works though in my imagery, my archetypes. They like it when I paint. And it makes me a happier person.

In the few years after that first Journey weekend, there where enormous changes. I married, had 2 children, emigrated, did the Practitioners Program, all the while I kept on painting. There is a painting, ‘Birth’ 2005, that stood over the bed, during labor of my first daughter. The paint still wet as I finished it 12 hours before Lily was born. There is a painting, ‘Guardian’ 2005, that frightened a friend who ended up buying it and it gave her support to make a life change. There is a painting, ‘Shelter’ 2004, that I made in the same week as my husband, on an other location, made a shelter out of mud and logs without each other knowing. There is a painting, ‘Snowcircle’ 2008, that is showing a woman that is one with her surroundings and yet very grounded. This piece is supporting a woman in her process of following her call, her vision. It is amazing how people who see my work, can have a very specific YES with one painting. As my husband says, ‘your paintings should come with a warning’. Now my own life has found ground, it is time for showcasing my art.

Iris Kiewiet, “Portrait2″, Acrylics on canvas, 2008, 16X20″

Iris Kiewiet, “Portrait3″, Acrylics on canvas, 2008, 16X20″

Iris Kiewiet, “Garden Crescent”, Acrylics on canvas, 2008, 36X48″

Iris Kiewiet, “River 2″, Acrylics on canvas, 2008, 32X40″
The Canadian Portrait Today

A love song

A necessity is dormant in this title. Not just because the Portrait Gallery is pending to go to Edmonton or Calgary, instead of Ottawa. The capital city has a beautiful location in the former building of The U.S. Embassy, and yet is still wavering to make it a home base. Having the gallery in Ottawa, can create a point of reference for historical reasons. And more important is it for creating a distinct tomorrow. What are our values, in a time of change. What are our borders when ice is melting in The North. What is our identity in the shape shift of migration. How much of the raw survival that came with the settlers, is still in our blood. After all that pioneering, Canada is still forming and shaping it’s face. An interesting question may be: What would this face look like?

A work that comes into mind that could illustrate that, is Jakub Dolejs’ “Escape to West Germany, 1972″. See the link below this article. A situated portrait of a young women with her baby on the move. A beautiful print, that is bigger then life and draws you right in. It clearly represents the migrating side of Canada. Even though the work refers to another geographic place, it reads as something we understand. Something that we, or our ancestors have experienced. The National Gallery of Canada has it in it’s permanent collection since 2004, thus acknowledging this language of seekers and survivors.
It is such a strong portrait, and yet, because of the setting of the woman and baby, the drama pulls you away from her face. Makes the faces less important to read. The strength lies in the portrait of the baby. The baby that is bold headed in the cold and despite the urge of the situation, has the hand flexed comfortably. Trusting mommy and not seeing the circumstances. Then, the alarm bells go of when watching this scene. The baby is not a real baby, it is a doll. Through this discovery, even at the speed of split seconds, you end up looking very different at the face of mother. With loads of new questions. How powerful her portrait becomes.

The mother – child portrait “Morning Sky” is less illustrative then Dolejs’ work but shows a similar dual reality between the mother and the child. Here, the child seems more sharp and grounded than the mother. The mothers look on her face is distant. Maybe she is even looking for another reality and is able to move between worlds. In the geographic sence as an immigrant. Debating the different values and landscapes and translating them towards the child. My work is sometimes refered as ‘ephemeral’. Which means not having a permanent state. Happiness is described as ephemeral, as humans can have varying shades of happiness and disappointment. In relation to this the other world would be a haven where answers obide. And this is where I find my imagery. Where I find answers to my questions. Something that feels natural to me. You can see this back in many of my portraits. A dialog that always plays is ‘how can this finer, mysterious presence, be grounded and real’?

Communicating with Canadians for me in 2004, at my first contact, was an eyeopener. A main reason to spend some time in Canada, was to explore, what the landscape would do for my paintings. The overload of culture in Europe was limiting me, suffocating me. Not just culture, renewing, designing, cynisism, conceptualising everything. It brought fear in my creative process and I new it wasn’t mine. So, communicating with Canadians. I was amazed with the expansiveness that was in so many people. It felt like Canadians had so much more confidence. Also a humbleness, a knowing there is something bigger. The landscape? God? Universe? Prairies? They spoke my language. Sometimes it seemed like I was talking to myself, or that others could read my mind. The impact on my artwork was huge. Literally, I painted bigger. Also the liveliness of the canvas was a big treat. As a dialog is shaped and formed to a story, or a person.

In May 2009 I will be in Canada for 3 years as a resident, with one year as a permanent resident. Painting has supported me, financially to make it though the winters, also spiritually, an anker that just stayed with me. Now I can see that this Canadian face, is becoming mature, visible, solid. The portraits have an innosence. A vulnerability. A strength. In ‘Caterpillar’, I came to the question, do I leave either the figure, or the surroundings out. Since they have a similar ‘charge’, energy, meaning. And I can’t. The one doesn’t go without the other in my paintings. The landscape needs the portrait. The person needs his/her surroundings. And that to me is the Canadian Portrait Today. A deep wisdom that comes from the land and permeates into all relationships we have.

http://www.jakubdolejs.com/artwork/escape_to_west_germany_1972