Prints are a great way to get involved with collecting from almost any artist who is producing in that medium. The reason is that prints are usually priced well below original, unique works. Prints offer much of what the artist has to express, and in the artist’s inimitable style, making them a good option.
I have been looking at the etchings of Marcelle Hanselaar, images of her etchings can be found at her website portfolio at
http://www.marcellehanselaar.com/. My recent article on the paintings of Marcelle Hanselaar appeared in the Contemporary Art Gallery Magazine, titled “MARCELLE HANSELAAR Expressive Sexual Symbols”. I asked Marcelle for an interview about her art works and her thoughts appear below.
How did you begin in art? “I drew a lot as a child, preferring my self created world to the ‘real’ one. As a teenager I had no idea what I wanted to do, drawing was the only thing I liked – short of telling stories to myself or to my sister when she was half asleep. So, I enrolled at the Royal Academy in The Hague. There I got a taste for possibilities but didn’t like the restraints of the art classes. I dropped out in the second year, became a painters’ model and from then on have been learning from other artists, dead or alive.”
Can you tell us how you progressed through various media and particularly into printmaking? “I am primarily an oil painter. About ten years ago my parents died and to my surprise I was hit by a kind of identity crisis. It is easy to know who or what you don’t want to be like and so with nobody to set myself off against I realized I had to start all over again to find what and who I was, not in comparison to anyone but in a freestanding way. Consequently I started drawing, obsessively and mostly late at night. These drawings became the basis for my etchings. In the beginning my drawings were related to childhood feelings I recalled, quite distorted of course by my grown up perspective. After a couple of years the focus shifted from the past to present experiences. These experiences are transcribed in scenes like theatre stills. The edginess and the tension within ourselves, our past and presents, our disappointments and longings is something I keep coming back to, both in painting and etching.
I never think of what I am going to draw, objects people, places all seems to flow out of my personal image bank. Similar to dream language. My etchings are erotic, expressing the fierce longing to bring the dark uncivilized, hidden and often unacceptable part in us into the light. Etching to me is very much a medium of secrecy, of stark visions and of sharp bitten lines. A medium which suits the unconventional and the hilarious. There is a lot of cross pollination both in technique as in subject between my graphic work and my painting. Painting I do in daylight, I face my canvas standing up, moving my hands and feet all the time like a dancer. Etching and drawing I do in the night, I sit down, knees pulled up, bent over my A4 size paper or plate, my hand and eyes the only bits that move.”
How did you develop your style into its present direction? “Over time my work moved from hard-edged abstract to lyrical abstract to an all out figurative expressionism.”
What kinds of compositional concerns do you respond to? “Tension is essential. The image should be contained in but not confined by the canvas size.”
What will be your next project? “The last 2 years I have been mainly painting, and I just finished fifty paintings and twelve etchings for my next solo show ‘The weight of smoke’ – An eighty page, full-color book/catalogue of the same title will be published in September of 2007. ‘The weight of smoke’ 21 October-26 November 2007, De Queeste Art, Watou, Belgium.
www.dequeeste-art.be. Galerie De Buytensael, Arnhem, NL London dates in 2007-8 to be confirmed.”
Please tell us about your printmaking techniques? “I work on both zinc and copper, always hardground with often quite a harsh bite . Being a painter I love the tonal quality of aquatint which I use in sugarlift or spitbite or in a straight forward layering and scraping til something appears which pleases me. I will try out tonality in line like Seeghers for instance, or build up layers of different kind of aquatints or acid strengths. This is quite experimental, a bit like cooking really, just trying to read the plate to see what is happening. And I draw with charcoal on my proofs to see how to develop the next
installment!”
What kind of tools/light/studio do you prefer? “As a painter I work in daylight only, I have my own studio, very private with a skylight. For painting I need solitude. Printmaking is more social practice. I draw my plates in my studio and then take them to a Print workshop were I bite them.”
What are your sources of inspiration? “My life and the observations of others.”
What other printmakers do you admire? “Goya, Mimmo Paladino, Otto Dix – all the German Expressionists really – Ken Currie, Louise Bourgeois, Bartolomeo dos Santos and the Chapman brothers.”
What was the most difficult project or commission you’ve encountered? “The next painting or etching.”
What are your interests and dislikes in art? “I dislike visual art which has no integrity – art which is made, like adverts, to be attention grabbing but has nothing more to offer. I particularly dislike those audio things at exhibitions, it’s impossible to listen and look at the same time and people stand there blocking your view and only look at the label to check if they are in front of the relevant picture! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I like the illusionary nature of painting and drawing. I love Baroque portrait painting – Velasguez, Rembrandt, Rubens etc. which is sensual and theatrical but where everything is suggested but not revealed. You need to look many times at them and they get more and more rewarding. And the great Beckmann for his merciless vision and sense of composition. I like the mysterious as in Salgado, Oppenheim, Hatoum, Kikki Smith, Bourgeois – all 3D artists – but also painters like Manet, Permeke, Ensor, Dumas, Borremans, Lupertz, Tuymans.”
There is another very good way to see additional works by Marcelle Hanselaar at the Flashfilm.com website.
Thank you Marcelle for the images and your interview. I hope to see the images from your upcoming exhibition. Here’s wishing you continued success.
- Giselle Borzov
