KORTE BESCHRIJVING, WERKWIJZE,VISIE EN INTERVIEW VAN DE KUNSTENARES

KORTE BESCHRIJVING:

Isis Nedloni wordt in 1954 in Loenen aan de Vecht geboren en groeit op in een groot artistiek gezin waar veel getekend en geknutseld wordt. Rond haar tiende wint ze , via een tekenwedstrijd de Annie M.G. Smit prijs. Ze komt echter in een koppige pubertijd terecht, maakt geen studies af en betaald daar later voor, door te weinig vooropleiding om op de kunstacademie terecht te komen.Wel ontstaan er verscheidene abstracten op papier en bezoekt ze de etaleurs school in Amsterdam. Op haar 18 de wordt haar zoon geboren en komt het beeldend werk op een laag pitje te staan.
Na een turbulent en soms traumatisch leven , ontstaat er rond haar veertigste een ommezwaai; de behoefte om abstract te schilderen wordt groter en ontdekt ze dat er voor haar iets essentieels mist in haar werk bij de psychiatrische thuiszorg. Ze schoolt zichzelf om en start in 1998 de HBO opleiding Beeldende therapie. Hier ontstaat haar beeldend onderzoek en raakt ze steeds meer geobsedeerd en gefascineerd door de verscheidenheid van structuren in haar werk en omgeving.Via deze studie exploreert en experimenteert ze o.a. met haar donkere en bovendien kwetsbare kant welke direct kan worden vormgegeven via verschillende materialen. Buiten dat ze een schitterend vak heeft geleerd, is haar creatie drang, wakkerder dan ooit en kan ze zich niet voorstellen dat dit creatieve proces ooit nog stopt.

WERKWIJZE

Om iedere afleiding te voorkomen , werkt ze altijd alleen. Soms stimuleert bepaalde muziek haar handelen (Flamenco , Fado, of opzwepende Balkan Tonen) en is er zelden een vooropgezet plan of idee dat uitgewerkt moet worden. In haar werk staat de ontstane structuur centraal. Met verschillende materialen (acryl,olie of pastelkrijt,zand, papier etc.) zoekt ze intuitief naar motieven die verroeren. De doeken komen soms onder de waterkraan terecht en wordt er vooral in het begin veel geschrapt , weggeveegd of *boetseert* ze soms haar werk met paletmessen. Op zoek naar haar interpretatie van schoonheid en kwetsbaarheid die verborgen ligt in de ontstane structuur. Het * ongelikte*, *het gebrekkige*, *het verkreukelde* , heeft vooral haar affiniteit.
Na deze zoektocht ontstaan er vormen die worden bijgewerkt. De thema s die ontstaan zijn altijd persoonlijk. Soms zoekt ze naar vrouwelijke vormen waardoor er een erotische uitstraling ontstaat. In 2003 worden er verschillende materialen zoals netjes, touw, vilt etc. gebruikt, die op het doek een geheel vormen. De kleuren rood, oranje en donker roze komen herhaaldelijk voor en is een citroengele omgeving tijdelijk favoriet. In 2004 komen er donkere horizonnen tevoorschijn en ontstaan er *duidelijker beelden*, Het abstracte krijgt meer zeggingskracht. Eind 2005 sterft haar vader en is ze een half jaar niet in staat tot schilderen. Na deze periode ontstaan er figuratieve en helder weergegeven vormen die in een zwarte omgeving huizen en blijft rood met veel zeggingskracht aanwezig.

VISIE

*Alles wat een mens doet, of niet doet, elk spoor die een mens achterlaat, zegt iets over haar of hem. Vertaal je dit naar de beeldende kunst, dan kom je in de psychoanalytische of archetypische invalshoek terecht. Via het maken van abstract werk ontstaat er een associatieve interactie met mezelf. De zintuiglijke waarneming en het spel met materialen speelt daarbij een belangrijke rol. Het maakt een diepere laag in mij los en (her) vind ik, via mijn werk een verbinding met het leven. Door te scheppen (vanuit mijn ziel), in zowel beeld als taal, kom ik in balans en ontstaat er voor mij meer houvast en *zin* in dit leven.


INTERVIEW UNDERGROUND MAGAZINE NEW YORK

More grip on life by creating

Isis Nedloni is a Dutch female painting artist who also has some roots in the United States. In this article she tells about the impressions she got during her time in the USA and her special perception of making and observing the arts, influenced by her American roots.

‘In the fifties, I was born on a boat in Loenen aan de Vecht, a small (river) town near
Amsterdam, the Netherlands. I grew up in an artistic family with lots of stimulation for creativity. My grandfather was a water colour painter, his nephew a famous sculptor and my mother a great crayon artist. At the age of ten, I won a drawing contest and I loved to write small stories. Unfortunately, my father suffered a war trauma which influenced our lives. I was stuck in a stubborn puberty and dropped out of several schools. Therefore, I could not pass the school of art. I manufactured paintings and drawings, but felt kind of lost.

‘At the age of seventeen, I became pregnant of an American ex-Vietnam veteran, married and went to the States for two months. My husband Rick got very sick (cancer), so we stayed two years longer. Our beautiful son Rufus was born in Macomb, Illinois. While Rick was treated, he studied psychology at the university. He introduced me into the psychology of Freud and Jung which influenced me for the rest of my life. My drawing activity almost stood still in the USA.

‘In the States, I lived in a conservative area. I had the opinion the average American was pretty tasteless. The way they decorated their houses, the way they dressed. People looked and thought the same way, raised by too many indoctrinated rules. Everything in the average life seemed to be planned from birth until death. I found them also very chauvinistic with no particular interests in other parts of the world and missed the individual creativity or the authenticity from persons. I could not stand the racism or the tough society. But, I enjoyed the wide horizons and wild nature of the Mid-west. I loved the creative mind of Andy Warhol, the action paintings by Jack Pollock, the rebels (image at least) Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Frank Zappa etc. I drank herb teas, smoked some marihuana, did read the Lord of the Rings, James Baldwin, Simone de Beauvoir, the philosophy of Sartre and the poetry of Oscar Wilde and Baudelaire.

‘After returning to The Netherlands, I divorced. My life got into a very difficult, sometimes hard and traumatic, negative spiral movement. Much violence happened: several violent rapes, suicides of close people. Too many hard circumstances in which I had to survive and raise my son. Later on, I managed to escape that life. My urge for painting came back and I started studying art therapy (bachelor-degree) in Nijmegen, which was a good combination with my work as a psycho-social worker.

‘From that moment, my art research and creative process started again. During that time, my obsession for all kinds of structure in my work and surroundings became stronger and stronger. I started to explore and experience my dark, vulnerable and traumatic parts, which can be expressed directly through different kinds of materials or through symbolism. During my study I learned about the iconology: a science that has an explanation for images, objects, the way of acting, symbolism of animals, persons etc. throughout history. I also learned about the creative world of the archetype (Jung) and the psycho-analysis (Freud).

‘In my profession the archetype is the symbol of an universal bridge from the sub-consciousness towards the consciousness. Through certain methods within art therapy you are able to get into contact with repressed emotions (conflicts). All over the world we find universal themes in our collective sub-consciousness: in men female parts (anima), in women the male part (animus), which are also hidden in the archetype symbolism. Through psycho-analytical perception an artist can express his or her desires and emotions: regression in favor of the ego. The artist can also project incoherent parts of himself into the work. Or work with free association (the way Pollock and Karel Appel did work). By expressing fairy-tales, myths or legends, the artist canalises the chaos of the sub-consciousness. I look and work from this art perception and its expression. Because of this perception, I observe and experiment from another point of view then most people do.

‘I see lots of universal overlapping areas between my work and those of modern American artists (painters): archetype works with structures and symbolism are spread all over the world. Especially at this time, with so much global communication and mobility, I can not see any difference between American and European art. Archaic art and mythology capture ages of symbolism of the original fears and lust of men (or women). Our modern psychology discovered that this old symbolic ‘language’ still lives in our dreams, our language and art, in spite of all the changes we have gone through in our external way of life. America is a young country. Before the (mostly) Europeans captured the land, it belonged to the Indians. They also used archetype forms and we discover them in all of our old cultures.

‘In the earlier days, fear and pompous forms surrounded America. Architecture wanted to go back to the influence of the Greek and the Roman times. After the abstract expressionism we saw the pop art (Andy Warhol), minimal art, conceptional art, post minimalism and land art (The Gates of Christo, Central Park, NY). Art for a big audience. The same process happens in Europe. Artists all over the world do influence each other. Even with these huge projects, like The Gates of Christo, or the conceptionel art, the artist tries to say something out of his sub-consciousness or his emotions. It’s expressed (comparative with painting) in a different way, in combination with lots of space or music and video. Especially two forms together are cutting up or do influence the heart of the matter.´

Influences

‘Obviously, I am attracted by (connected to) painters or other artists who are my “Art soul mates”, “the damaged ones”. I am very fascinated by the works of Joseph Beuys who has put his war traumas and solutions in his huge searching project during his art career. Throughout his artistic movements he collected all kinds of material. He made several special tracks, compositions or poetry, in combination with his free attitude toward art (everybody is an artist, he said). This search can be reflected on the life events he went through, surviving them and the new way you can look at life when you rise above it.

‘The works of Francis Bacon I also admire. I see his hidden youth conflicts, or his expression of his homosexuality and the men he loved. He transformed his images in a sometimes brutal, hard or raw beautiful form. Willem de Koonink captures things with wildness and at the same time he uses special vulnerable colours (which are also a symbolic expression for our emotions) and lightness in his expression. I love Giagometti’s gift of showing human vulnerability and relativity.

‘Perl Perlmuter inspires me by her rough organic and balanced sculptures. Egon Schiele goes with his paintings and drawings, like nobody else, to the erotic and lonely roots that mankind can express. I also enjoy the thick, bulging and lonely expression of Edward Hopper. In the paintings of Frida Kalho I do see a lot of pain one suffers when your soul is damaged and therefore vulnerable. Her symbolic expression probably has kept her in a certain balance and I know she did create out of the dark part of her soul. The way she uses symbolism betrays her emotions of sorrow.

‘Frida Kahlo also used a strong archetype Mexican way of expressing herself in her work. At the same time, I recognise my own symbolism in her work. I see emotions of suffering, loneliness, anger, longings, admiration and the distance one experiences with the other when life gives you a damaged vulnerability. Because I also create out of the dark parts of my soul and are able to express the archetype way I see the analogous ‘language’ of other painters who work within the same structure.´

My way of working

‘To avoid any diversion I work alone. Particular music (Flamenco, Fado or Balkan tunes) stimulates my working. When I am working with abstraction, there is no preconceived plan. The structure has a central place. I look intuitively for motives that move me. Sometimes, the canvas is being held underneath the water taps and there is a lot of scratching in the beginning when I search for my interpretation of beauty and its vulnerability.

‘The unpolished, the damaged, the faultiness, the crumpled has my affinity. In my head there is a dark war going on, which of course is related to my own small neuroses and too many traumatic experiences. I‘ve been confronted with several psychopathic behaviours of others. They influenced my constitution for the rest of my life, of course. The only way I can defeat my traumatic experiences is to yield them. I paint or draw them, wear black clothes, paint my eyes black and stay in contact with my authentic self. However, my traumatic history has changed me forever.

‘In 2003, I worked with mixed materials like ropes, nets, felt and so on. The colours red, orange and pink return in several paintings and there is a bright yellow surrounding in my work, a temporary favorite. In 2004, dark horizons are familiar. These helped me to turn the images in sharper shapes. At the end of 2005, sadly enough my fathers suddenly died and I stopped painting for a while. After this period of mourning, my work became more surrealistic and is always setup in a black dark surrounding. Red still is a dominant colour. From here I start to work in a different way. First the images arise in my head. They are drawn on paper and worked out with paint and oil crayons. The themes are always personal or inspired by the repressed hidden part of my soul.´

My vision

‘Anything a human being does or does not, every track a human being leaves behind, tells us something about his or her emotional (sub-conscious) background. When you translate this into the expressiveness of art, you get involved into either the archaistic or the psycho-analytical way of perception. By manufacturing abstract works (associative action painting), I get into an associative interaction with myself. The sensory perception is an important factor in this, like playing with materials. By acting, I touch an “underground” level in myself, “my personal and also universal underworld” which is connected with deeper parts of life. Also my open, creative mind brings me to universal (archetype) symbolism. By creating, both in language and image, I get into balance. It all results in more grip and ‘eagerness’ for this life.´

Examples of works by Isis Nedloni are to be found on www.jp-tekstproducties.com, section ´Schilderij/Painting.

Johan Peters