Marjet Visscher (b 1979) paints in oils and makes graphic work: etchings, lithographs and woodcuts. Having grown up as a farmer's daughter in the province of Groningen, nature remains an inexhaustible source of inspiration for her. She prefers to work in series and go outside for a period to explore. Last summer, for instance, she camped out for a week in the dunes to make work for an exhibition in the Zandvoorts Museum, and for the past two years she has been working intensively on one specific spot in nature reserve Amelisweerd, where she discovered a field of coltsfoot. The motivation for a work is always something that catches her attention and touches her heart. This could be the beautiful shapes of plants, a certain incidence of light between and on leaves or trees, exciting vistas, complex structures, rhythms and colours. These images 'call' to be painted, so to speak. It is not her ambition to 'literally' translate what she sees, but rather to create worlds in which people can lose themselves, marvel and (far) wander. By looking intensely and giving full attention to her subject, she first loses herself and hopes to touch others and make them look at reality in a new way. In her work, she likes to seek out contrasts, between abstract and figurative, between light and dark, between flowering and decay, between soft and sharp boundaries, between transparent and opaque use of paint, and between tranquillity and dynamism. These contrasts make a wo
