What’s your name?
Belinda
Where were you born?
In Rotterdam.
What’s your profession?
Artist.
Since when?
As a visual artist, 28 years ago. As an actress 4 years ago.
What do you like most about your profession?
I can give a form to my imagination.
What is your hobby?
Painting.
Which property to a person is important to you?
That this person is sweet.
Which human being do you admire?
My mother, she put me on this world.
What’s your most prominent characteristic?
Sweet.
What do you want to tell the world?
That I’m an artist, and that I love my job.
What do you want to learn?
I don’t know.
What do you like about your appearance?
The feeling people get from me.
For what can we wake you up at night?
My own selfmade macaroni.
What is your most precious possession?
My bathrobe, which I got from our help, who sadly passed away.
What is your dearest memory?
Going to Japan with Richard, our mentor at Galerie Atelier Herenplaats.
What’s your saddest memory?
When my guinea pig died.
When were you happiest?
When I sold my first painting to Philips.
What was the last thing that made you cry?
I don’t know.
Who would you like to have dinner with?
Frans Bauer.
Belinda’s dream from the start has been to have her own studio. In 1993 she was invited to share a studio space with a friend and fellow artist at the top floor of a converted school building on the Drievriendenstraat. A few years later she rented her own studio in the Hoornbrekerstraat. In 2012 she moved again to a different part of the city, a studio on the Gerard Sterkmanplein. Belinda finds it very important to be able to create in peace and quiet, and in her own space.
Belinda has been drawing since she was very young. Every five minutes, at school or at home, she could be found with a pencil in hand. Her creative subjects were countless: a wedding, the circus, a landscape or city view, animals etc. ‘At first I painted as if it had to be completely true to life. Realistic’. In the Atelier Herenplaats’ art lending library, she started to realise there was less public interest in her work than in that of the others. This is why Belinda started to search for what else she had to offer. ‘What I used to make, was rather uncertain. Then Frits (one of the Atelier’s supervisors) said: “You have to turn everything upside down”.
She did exactly that. In June 1992, she symbolically bid farewell to her old work by permanently exhibiting it in the so-called ‘Belinda Tijssen cellar’. From this moment on, she abandoned her true to life paintings and threw herself completely into experimentation. She tried out all sorts of materials and techniques alongside and combined with each other. She painted with rollers, pallet knifes and with her fingers, made collages, etchings, linocuts, painted with sand and squeezed the paint straight out of the tube onto the painting.
Sometimes she even tore up her work and used it to make something new. Belinda's approach was also different on a psychological level. She no longer worked from a preconceived plan, but let the forms evolve naturally. She often turned the painting around halfway through and from this changed perspective, painted yet another image on top; a working technique which she still frequently applies. ‘You can see more of the colour if you turn the painting round. If you put it like this, then it remains monotone, but if you turn it around you can get more movement into it, or you get yet another movement with your brush.’ As her self-confidence grew, the use of colour became more expressive and the brush technique freer and looser. This experimental search initially produced abstract work: large pieces of paper with powerful areas of colour and accurate brush strokes. From this abstract work she finally started working figuratively again. Figures crept out of the expressive areas of colour, which with a bit of fantasy, could represent anything. Belinda gave her work titles: ‘People should look at what they see in them for themselves.’
In about 1994, Belinda started featuring women in her paintings. Why she chooses the female form over the male's, she explains: ‘Women have beautiful shapes and beautiful colours. More beautiful colours than men. Men actually have very little colour.’
To support her work she followed life drawing classes at the Vrije Academie (free academy). ‘For about two years I really liked it. A little bit of searching and discovering. Like hey, I can also use that as subject matter.’ Now that the classes have finished, she finds her inspiration literally on the streets: ‘Sometimes I draw from the window. I grab my sketch book and climb into the gutter.’ While the life drawing classes were taking place, Belinda went on a work placement with the Rotterdam sculptor Robert Jan Donkers. There she learnt to work with limestone and wax. One of the sculptures that Belinda made there was cast in a limited edition of bronze and for five successive years was awarded as first prize to organisations who devote themselves to promoting a positive image of people with a mental handicap. Belinda worked a period as an apprentice to the sculptor Albert Kramer, with whom she could discuss her drawings. He taught her to work with PE-foam blocks. In 2012 she created another sculpture in bronze, which went on to win the ‘Hans Kröber Prize’, awarded by the social psychiatry clients’ committee.
There is a large pile of paper on the drying rack which Belinda has worked on in the past month. ‘I often make several paintings at the same time. I let them dry and a day later, I look at them again to see what I can do. They might have changed, right?’ All these paintings are to do with Belinda’s newest source of inspiration: babies. Is Belinda battling with the maternal instinct now that she has reached childbearing age? ‘No, but I do have lots of second cousins’.
In contrast to the paintings of women in which one or two are portrayed, the babies are in groups of nine or twelve. ‘This way I wanted to show how it all grows and what can exist further. They are the different months, but it can also be that it's in your tummy, just like that.’
Exhibitions
1992 Het gezicht (the face), national touring exhibition (catalogue)
1992 "Zonder Omweg", Singermuseum, Laren (interview NOS-news program)
1995 Study-tour to Slovenia concerning exhibition in Galerija Stare Grad,Ptuj
1998 Solo exhibition in Gallery StuArt, Bergen op Zoom
1998 Participation international workshop and exhibition Änglar,Gallery INUTI, Stockholm, Sweden (catalogue)
2000 Study tour to Japan concerning exhibition in Museum Kyosei No Sato, Amagi-city, Japan
2002 "Die Welt: Innen Nach ussen", Hamburg, Germany
2003 "Bruut", Gallery Herenplaats in cooperation with Showroom Mama, Rotterdam
2005 Gek op Kunst (mad about art),Gallery Hollandia, Vlaardingen
2005 Exhibition "Parkas", art in the open air, Rotterdam
2006 "Who Am I", graphic exhibition Gallery Herenplaats Rotterdam
2006 Jubileum exhibition "15 years Herenplaats", Gallery Herenplaats, Rotterdam
2007 "Colourful world", Gallery Herenplaats, Rotterdam
2007 "No Name", Gallery Alte Turnhalle, Bad Durkheim, Germany
2007 "Who Am I # 3", Gallery Herenplaats, Rotterdam
2008 "Metamorfose", Gallery Herenplaats, Rotterdam
2008 "CLAY!", an exhibition of ceramics, Gallery Herenplaats, Rotterdam
2008 Exhibition in Niki Kurabu, Tokyo, Japan
2009 Exhibition in "Het Rijk van Kralingen", Rotterdam
2009 Exhibition Kaarisilta Art and Activity Centre, Finland
2010 "Outsider Art Salon", Gallery Herenplaats, Rotterdam.
2011 Exhibition Zorgcentrum Crimpenersteyn, Krimpen a/d IJssel
2011 "Who Am I # 5"; graphic exhibition, Gallery Herenplaats, Rotterdam
2012 "Who am I", Galerie du haut Pavé, Parijs, France
2013 "Face to Face", Gallery Herenplaats, Rotterdam
2013 "Borelo-Lifemap", Artium, Fuhuoka, Japan Ceramic object in parking lot Schouwburgplein, Rotterdam
Bronze sculpture for the Foundation: "beeldvorming"
Workshops with the following artists
Henk van Setten
Yvon Koopman
Robbert Jan Donker
Lessons modelling, Open Ateliers Rotterdam
Catalogues
1992 "Het Gezicht"
1998 Änglar, Stockholm, Sweden.
2000 Holland - Japan
In the project Beautiful People www.beautifulpeople.nl images by Belinda Tijssen have been used for a unique coffee set
