b .1955, Netherlands
Dutch Post-war & Contemporary artist Ellen de Meijer paints portraits of modern-day archetypes, as an expression of our collective struggles and lies. They are an observation of society's harmful social structures and conventions that we all seem to adhere to, and according to the artist, also greatly impact our future generations. Each archetype represents both aggressor and victim, resulting in fake appearances, and convey separation from the true inner nature of mankind. Recurring themes in her work are status and power, loss of emotion and authenticity, innocence, resistance, climate change, consumerism, competition, technology, and material wealth.
Ellen de Meijer is favored by American, Brazilian, French, Spanish and Dutch private art collectors, such as the Van den Broek Foundation which belongs to the Dutch top 5 private art collectors. Her work has been exhibited at various international and exhibitions in the US.
From a young age, Ellen De Meijer was fascinated by what we would now simply describe as ‘communication via image’. She started her artistic career in the realm of photography; perhaps the most direct form of ‘the image’ at the time, and after a short period in commercial photography she started to feel the urge to express more than just an image of reality, but to present a complete image – the world of the seen and the unseen at the same time. To fulfill this desire, she at first turned to the world of the written. She studied Dutch literature and began writing, only to find that this too was not satisfying, as writing alone lacked the strength of tangibility. At the age of 28, she then turned to fine arts and was educated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Tilburg, the Netherlands. Illimitably fascinated by paint and all its possibilities, she plunged herself into painting with a visceral eagerness to explore every technical aspect and style she came across in the history of painting. Yet always with the goal of discovering a way to create her own, ultimate ‘complete image’.