Maaike Schoorel (1973)
It's like trying to see in the dark: it takes a while before you start to see outlines and can identify individual objects. The pale, white-on-white paintings of Maaike Schoorel also require some patience. Foreground and background disappear into each other. But the longer you look, the less empty her paintings become. There is, in fact, a portrait or still life there, waiting to be discovered. Not rendered in full but in bits and pieces. The blue cap of a bottle of mineral water or the shoulder of a jacketed man appears – and once you see it, it doesn't go away.
The artist draws on classical genres like the group portrait, the beach scene and the still life, but doesn't leave many clues.* Originally working primarily from snapshots, she increasingly paints from her dreams or from memory.** Her canvases can perhaps be seen as a counterbalance to the raucous pace of today's channel-surfing culture. She depicts her subjects in fragments of light colours on a light background. A cohesive image only reveals itself after a time, with studied patience. Maaike Schoorel studied at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and the Royal College of Art in London, where she now lives and works.
* www.dehallenhaarlem.nl, 27.11.2008
** L. Dost, ‘Bijna ongrijpbaar voor het oog’, de Volkskrant, 07.10.2008
