Maaike and John

Based on photographs and domestic environments, Maaike Schoorel’s paintings are charged with an atmosphere of melancholy and loss. In her paintings images emerge slowly. Her figurative paintings appear faded or bleached with brush strokes that suggest outlines and restrained marks that imply areas of colour or shadow. The viewer must participate in the paintings, employing a particular way of looking that allows the images to unravel slowly over time. The spaces they provide are not only physical, but also conceptual – the freedom to find pleasure in their beauty, or to find consolation in the way in which they transform memory from an image of yesterday into a fresh, present-day experience.