drypoint - etchings - sculptures - illustrations
Mira den Hartog
Born in 1977 in Warnsveld
Living and working in Utrecht city,
The Netherlands
During my studies at the Utrecht School of the Arts, I came into contact with printingtechniques. A craft that forces you to master the technique, (material) knowledge and skills before you can let your imagination speak. A classic approach to art, that suits me.
During this period I became proficient in the dry point technique. I graduated with a series of minimalist drypoint prints.
Etching
After graduating I immediately bought an etching press and rented an extra room in the house where I lived to turn it into a studio.
Gradually I started to combine the drypoint with the etching technique, in two-color printing. With the drypoint (the female figure) as a starting point, supplemented with the etching technique with which I create her 'living world'. In addition, I often let the plate acidify so deeply that relief is created in the paper.
Education
1996-2000 Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht, autonomous art
Exhibitions
amung which:
* Realismebeurs Amsterdam 2006 en 2015
* Kunstmaand Ameland 2015
* Nieuwe Kunstmarkt Utrecht 2014
* Museum de Buitenplaats Eelde 2007
* Grafiek Nu 10, Singermuseum Laren 2003
* KunstRai Amsterdam 2002
Exhibitions in several Galeries
2000 - present
Galeries
amung which.:
Galery Petit, Amsterdam
Art dealership Juffermans, Utrecht
Gallery De roos van Tudor, Leeuwarden
Kunstzaal van Heijningen, Den Haag
Graphics store Ink,t Den Haag
Galery Besselaar, Utrecht
Winner BAS-graphics prize
Juryprize 2014
The two sides on everything
and then the third
My prints ostensibly represent the past in technique, imagery and subject; the female nude. The present is reflected in the fact that I use myself as an example
A kind of premature (craft) selfies.
Clothing, possessions, especially social media seem more and more a means of gaining control over the identity you want to share with the outside world , regardless of its absolute reality (if it can be understood at all)
My prints are expressions of a search for how the inner world - self-image, accurate or not; your uncensored world of thought - relates to the outside world and vice versa.
Where the individual stands in relation to the group; the value of 'being yourself' and our need for acceptance by others and the safety of the group.
That is why I made the somewhat scary choice to use myself as an example and to 'expose' myself to the outside world, which is represented in the reactions to my work
An interpretation of my image (drawn from memory) stripped of a chosen identity - so (usually) naked. Alone and surrounded by associatively chosen objects and / or forms as a living world. With an artist's free hand as a filter.
In addition, for a few years now I have been inspired by what I see through my microscope in structures; omnipresent in ourselves and everything around us. An inescapable fact and therefore timeless.
When you zoom in you discover that the structures often come back in what you see when zooming out . If so, then reality lies in principle; the particles from which everything is made up, in the overview , at a distance, or is it in the middle.
Ontmoet Dilys!
Hi !
Dilys is an additional result of this. She is an alter ego and plays a leading role in a series of pencil and pen drawings. The starting point is the thought; how your life could have taken a different turn at any time.
The question then follows: who, what or where would you be? These twists and turns can only take place in the imagination, so anything is possible.
I started putting her 'life'on paper, who knows where it will end.
Illustrations
I can also express my great interest in all that's so human in the illustrations that I make. Based on events in daily life, in order to depict recognizable, typically human situations in pen drawings. As well as visual reactions to current events, which often revolve around social issues in our society.
From a illustration for a (children's) story to a political cartoon.
Glass sculptures
A previous interest of mine at the art academy was sculpture. I have made some classic bronze sculptures over the years, but wanted more. Or something else.
After I had learned the Tiffany technique as a voluntary activity supervisor at the Maliegilde / Wij 3.0 Utrecht, two ideas coincided. To use this technique to make sculptures and to do something with the fragile objects that you put under the microscope between glass plates.
I find the caution and patience with which you handle these preparations and the attention and admiration with which you look at them through the microscope almost moving.
This created the combination in my glass sculptures, which frame holds a story or memory in the small objects between glass.