Happy New Year!

Whether you live in a country where market booths look like this

or like this...

I want to wish you a very
creative
prosperous
healthy
and
overall happy

New Year
!!!

Circle of Art

This time I remembered to take some digital collages with me before leaving the Caribbean.

Making art, be it with fabric, paper or digital, has to wait until I am home again.

However, I am enjoying the beauty that is around me, as always, and this change of places feeds my creativity.

Despite the winter weather and the cold I make my daily walks. I look at my country with the eyes of a stranger, not a complete stranger of course, but yet a fresh look. All the luxury that I have come to live without or to a less extend (which is not bad at all!) amazes me. The roads and highways that are in a perfect condition, without the many potholes that we have to deal with on our island. The really crazy amount of brands you see in the supermarket and pharmacies. I mean, who is asking for hundreds of different bottles of shampoo and other hair products, who really needs all this excess? The same goes for the fashion shops in whichever town you are. While there is a big sale going on to get rid of the surplus of clothes, the new (winter!) fashion is hanging in the shops already. Do they really expect us to buy a complete wardrobe for the few winter months that are ahead of us? When seeing all this, I get a feeling, not for the first time, that I don't belong here anymore. For me the effect is that I refuse to buy anything!

So I stick to some art material and fabrics this time.

Don't think that these musings make me feel sad, for that is not the truth. It's just that I get a feeling of 'letting it go', which I assume, is not bad at all...

Inspiration from the Netherlands

a visit to a very cozy, simple tapas restaurant

even this can bring me to a very inspired state of mind

this was a fantastic mural inside the restaurant. I hope to lighten it up as soon as I am home again.

Untill then we enjoy Holland, our family, children, the shopping possibilities, the countryside
and each other.

I hope you enjoy your holidays too!

Snow and rain...

No bikes in this weather...

Do we really need to go out today?

'Moi' in the rain in Zevenaar (Holland) this morning

Wishing you all

a wonderful time,

together with family and friends,

wherever you may be

from a very snowful and wintery Holland:

Merry X-mas!

On cruiseships and inspiration

Today was the second time the Oasis of the Seas docked on our island.

Last week I was too late to take pictures, but here it is, seen from our boardwalk in Philipsburg. If you click you can get an idea of the size, the cruiseship to its left is already a big one...

Lots of tourists walking in Philipsburg's streets and alleys, so I quickly left after having made the picture

this is one of my favorite photographs, taken from a book on safari!

Everytime I come across it in my digital archive I feel happy and inspired, so I thought why not share it with you today?

This afternoon we leave for a trip to Curacao and we will travel on to Holland from there in the weekend. Though I hate to leave my studio behind, I am sure there will be some eyecandy and maybe art for me in the winter over there!

Thanks for visiting.

From the coffeeshop (1)

Coffeeshop collage 1

During last year's USA-trip we frequented the S-coffeeshops,

you know, not the Dutch/Amsterdam kind of coffee shops, but the ones where one might get

addicted to Frappucino! Just saying S should be enough for most of you to know what I am talking about, without adding to their PR.

What I love in all these places, beside the coffee of course, are the wallpapers, the little pieces of art that are always there, and are always different. I never saw the same thing twice!

So wherever we drank our morning coffee I shot pictures, lots of pictures.

I was so happy to finally find some art( sy expressions)!

It is fun to combine these pictures with whatever I have on photographs in my archive.

Today's digital collage is one of the results of this new series.

Sunday collage

Today a digital collage that I have not posted yet, though it has been sitting in my archive for a while

Pictures made in Washington last summer on July 4. If you click you can see the decoration on the veranda of a tourist office building somewhere on the Olympic Peninsula, combined with a license plate and a field of Canola

Washington 09

Working on this (4)

Detail of my experiment of earlier this week,

right as it is now, after some layers of acrylic paint

Oh boy!

I told you it would totally change and

it is not finished yet

By the way: I almost missed the Oasis of the Seas, due to an extended visit to the hairdresser. Was able to photograph it when the ship left the harbour and as the sun had already set, the results are bad. Next week Wednesday there will be another chance, but of course there is only one maiden trip, alas! For what I could see in the pinkish dusk the ship looked ugly, and of course huge

But I like my highlights :) !

Excitement on SXM

Because today world's biggest cruiseship, Oasis of the Seas,

will visit our island on its maiden trip

A huge jetty has been built to accomodate it, you can see the spot on the

first picture. If you click you also can see Fort Amsterdam about which

I've written some posts ago (the green 'peninsula' to the centre right)

Great Bay at sunset yesterday.

From this lovely place I will have a toast tonight at sunset on this floating city.

Though personnaly not a lover of things so huge, I do hope that lots of people enjoy their trip and that our island will profit from its weekly visits...

Working on this (3)

the view from our veranda this morning,

cats and dogs

so I sip my ice coffee and

continue quilting
...

Working on this (2)

Quilting, quilting...

Working on this (1)

This time I have a plan, more or less :)

it is only the beginning and may look totally
different when it's finished
so stay tuned...

Black and white!

Yesterday one of my rare artfriends on the island came to visit me. We talked and talked, about life, about family and of course about art. Besides being a gifted painter she is making the most wonderful reconstruction art. Like me she loves to use all kind of materials that had a life before and recycle them into new works of art. We also have in common that we work in a spontaneous, intuitive way, being inspired by what we see and feel for a great part. We had a wonderful time together!

As our discussion about art is still lingering on with me this morning , I am also contemplating on the week that is almost over.

For me it has been a productive week, on various levels. I have started making collages again, you can see them in my latest posts. Have been sewing clothes, finished art quilts and only have to put on the sleeves.

What has all this hopscotch of topics have in common, you wonder?

Well, to revert to the title of this post: they are in black and white.

Though I am a truly colourful person (or so they say...)

I sometimes just crave B & W!

So as a tribute to black and white and to close this post in style

I chose these pictures

chalkboards are an alltime favorite, oh, and tapas, of course (what about some black olives, mmm?)

this painting can be seen on the backside of a restroombuilding (!) on one of the island's favorite beaches. Did I mention before that art is not a priority on SXM?

Lichen on some huge boulders that you pass when walking to
Guana Bay (another beautiful beach for walking, too wild and dangerous to swim)

detail of an old wall of a building at Fort Amsterdam

that I intend to visit again this weekend

detail of wallpaper in a shopwindow in Vancouver last summer

Ah, the joy of being an artist, always finding treasures and beauty, wherever you look and wherever you are!

Enjoy your weekend...

On my way home

Yesterday I had some Xmas-shopping to do, so I went to Marigot

on the French side of the island

And because I ended up in a traffic jam I shot some pictures, here they are, SOOC, to get a glimpse of our Caribbean island, right now!

my eye fell on the sign in the middle of the picture, please read to click.

Hey, it's French here!
some window shopping... Look, all rasta stuff is on sale!

to get from one side to the other side of the island, one has to go 'over the hill'
There is always a beautiful Caribbean Sea
and yesterday the view was dramatic, it felt as a special gift to me

at the end of the mountain, after the roundabout and the sea I turned left and this busy, crowded panorama was visible. I hope you enjoyed this photo tour from Marigot to my home,

'Over the hill'

Black and White 2

'Au bout du monde'

Don't know why these words, but I liked them and had fun!

Black and White 1

Today I started clearing my worktable, browsed through some old magazines and

(yes, once again, it often happens this way)

I got inspired and decided quite spontaneously to make some collages.

Like the ones I made earlier this year, I hardly thought about anything, just chose to make them in black and white because that feels right at the moment. Obviously no or hardly any planning here :) Though I sometimes work in a more or less structured manner, even practise mindmapping every now and then, but not for this small works.

So my process is in short: browse, rip and glue!

After a week of not being allowed to work with my hands because of a bruised finger with stitches, it felt so good to finally make some art again, albeit just these quickies...