To be honest, I’ve been a little discouraged lately. The things I’ve been trying to make my art visible to new people and to boost my sales, haven’t been working the way I had hoped. I feel like I need to make some changes, but making decisions in a state of fear isn’t always the best idea.

The first 7 months of 2024 I spent painting. I completed my collection UNMUTE – Journey of a recovering people-pleaser, and some other pieces I really love. By the beginning of summer though, I got restless. Something was missing.

I was doing it again, overthinking based on my usual fears.

For a couple of years now, I’ve been trying to create my dream life. That not only includes painting, but also, and especially being more myself.

I consider myself an expert at surviving. Not the jungle surviving kind, but the everyday Western society survival skills. And you are in luck, because today I’m sharing my top 5 survival rules with you, free from charge!

The step from being a student to working full-time was very hard for me.

I once worked at a company with a really conservative IT manager. Cybersecurity was his thing.

A while ago I told a friend that I was sick and that my priority for the week was to get better. No pressure to be productive in any way.

I’ve started working on my new collection of paintings: sketching, trying different color combinations, selecting reference photos,…

Four years ago I had the weirdest dream…

The word I chose for myself for this year is ‘abundance’. And by that I don’t necessarily mean that I want a lot of material things. It’s more the feeling of abundance that I want to focus on.

I used to have a recurring dream: I am driving a car, but the pedals are so far away from my seat that my feet can’t reach them, and I have no control over where I’m going. I’m scared, and I can’t solve the situation, and the car won’t stop.

Now that I (force myself to) take some time off every week, I bumped into a new obstacle: I don’t have any hobbies. My hobby became a passion, and my passion is my everything, but who am I when I’m not painting?

For 17 years, I worked a “normal” job, from 9 to 5, 4 days a week. The remaining 3 days were spent recovering, because that kind of schedule is not healthy for my body, even though it was less than what most people do.

Now I don’t have a schedule anymore, which is great.

I did two stupid things this week. No capital sins, but nevertheless I feel awful about them.

I would not want someone who looks like The Rock to be my fitness trainer. I don’t want painting classes from my art hero Tai-Shan Schierenberg or business advice from Tony Robbins.

‘As long as there’s hope, there’s life’, they say. I’m not sure if I agree with that.

When I was a child, I loved playing Office. Sorting papers, choosing stamps, stenciling, putting them in colored folders. Oh, and adding stickers. 10-year old me would have been elated, because all those things are exactly what I am doing today.

Overall I consider myself to be a fairly intelligent person. Not with numbers, and not with any technical stuff, but, you know, in general. I’m not feeling very smart today. By far.

There’s one painting part of my collection (We are) Never Broken, that I didn't show it at the art fair. There was room for 13 pieces, and I had 15. I chose not to put it up, because it's a bit of an outsider. But I love it, and I want to share it with you.