How playing guitar led to becoming an artist

Just like most children I loved drawing, but I never thought about becoming an artist. I used to write pages and pages in my diary, sow tiny clothes for all my stuffed animals, read books and make music. As a teenager I became an avid guitar player, both acoustic an electric, and would play for hours on end, neglecting schoolwork if I could. At that time I thought I might become a writer, a musician or even a lawyer (not quite sure why!?).

I have clear memories of one particular evening when I was 16 years old, up in my bedroom and very bored. A few days earlier I had gotten an old field easel and managed to set it up, found some paper and decided I would draw standing up like an artist. I actually had guitar legend Jimi Hendrix pose for my drawing, obviously being very still on his poster. When I finished the drawing I was amazed at what had happened. I had made a portrait drawing of Jimi and it looked awesome! I proudly showed it to my parents who were equally amazed. After this, I needed to make sure this wasn’t just a one off thing, and made another portrait from one of my posters. This time it was Kurt Cobain and his drawing turned out great too.

I wanted to see where this could lead and I took art classes. This is how I discovered that I could do so much more than I gave myself credit for and I decided to go to art school to become a graphic designer. Well, the designing part turned out not to be for me at all and I switched to becoming an art teacher, because that way I would have the broadest curriculum available at art school.

When I graduated from the Maastricht Academy of Art, me and my partner, now called hubby, left for the Caribbean. He had gotten a job offer and I went along. On the beautiful island of St. Maarten, I taught art at a special education primary school, art history at the University and private art classes on our back porch. Besides this period being the sunniest years of my life, living in the Caribbean feels like such an important part of me (even if it's almost two decades ago).

A few years later we said island life goodbye with mixed feelings and returned to the Netherlands and our family. Kids came along and family was the main focus. Until a few years ago when we moved into our current house and the opportunity presented itself to have my own home art studio. I had gotten into creating art more and more, but from the dining room table. That was not ideal at all to say the least. Art materials and project were scattered throughout the entire house. Needles to say that the rest of my family wasn't always too thrilled about this. So my own art space came into being!

The need to create my own art is becoming stronger and stronger. It took a world stopping event to slow down society and me, to make me realize what I truly wanted. And that’s to make beautiful art from the soul that connects you, me and all of us to the magic and wonder in this world.  

I will continue working on doing just that!

xx Cindy