TAWA at 45
The Exhibition
Annelies van Dommelen
Heart and Soul
acrylic over blind-embossed collagraph on paper, mounted on bookboard with clay paint surround, 2023; 32″h x 20″w
Annelies van Dommelen (www.vandommelenart.com) had formal training at Mercer County Community College when fresh out of high school, at Hussian School for Commercial Art a few years later, and plenty of drawing sessions in between. She also went to PAFA in Philadelphia for a few years in the late ‘80s after being in the field already. She has studied at many workshops including Pennland, Haystack, Woman’s Studio workshop, Zeas Mays, Vermont Studio School, and more, always to learn something new. Her galleries were in Philadelphia, locally, and she had a show in the Netherlands. She has received two NJ State Council on the Arts grants and has also received awards in different shows for varied mediums. She was also part of the beginnings of Artsbridge and the Artists Gallery. Her work is also in the collection of several corporations and many private homes of collectors.
“My main mediums are acrylics, oils, watercolors, papermaking, hand-constructed archival boxes covered with my painted paste paper, and assembled dioramas from collected objects that will include most of the mediums I work with. I am also a printmaker, mostly monotypes, collagraphs now, but have had my hand in all printmaking techniques. A lot of my work encompasses more than one medium. I am also abstract and figurative. I start each piece with usually no set idea. I can be moved in any direction depending on the interaction I have with it. I am not programmed as to what a finish will look like and the interest for me is in the process of work as I go along with this back-and-forth conversation, so to speak. The adding of paint is as important as its removal and my challenge is to sacrifice areas of great delight to lead the eye towards an important end. I am deeply inspired by natures forms and colors, but I am not one who will reproduce it, I respond to it and by memory or osmosis or invention animals, insects, human figures, or blooms of my design will occupy the work which then creates a sort of story line for both the viewer and me to follow. As opposed to being a minimalist, my work is more on the maximalist side, full of information editing it down to a cohesive composition.”