Artist’s Statement:

“The size of my work can be very different, but I prefer small. In my larger work there are usually smaller concentrations in a larger whole. I think I’m looking for an intimate whispering and silent imagery. Settled and layered.”

“Everyone can look at my work in their own personal way. I love that. For me it’s an abstract language. My favourite artists are Cy Twombly and Antoní Tápies. And I love work that I think … how dare you … so vulnerable. My favourite periods are the interbellum [interwar] and the time just after World War II.” Elly Dijkshoorn

Elly Dijkshoorn (b.1949, Vlaardingen, The Netherlands) studied at the Royal Academie of Fine Arts in The Hague, and has exhibited internationally. She works mostly with acrylic on birchwood panels and adds materials such as paper, textiles and photographs that suggest memory.

The ‘Small Things’ series, shown in the London exhibition “Small Spaces in the City”, are miniature studies that seem to hint at tiny interior rooms and passageways. The kind of spaces that you might see in dreams.

“The sense of layering, juxtaposition, materiality and colour placement are so sensitive in her abstraction and process that her works seem to connect to something universal, as well as to personal thoughts. They draw you in and slow time, with meanings that hover just out of reach. In some ways they remind me of the 1960s and 70s work of Robert Ryman. I love them individually but also when they are exhibited as a series.” Clare Farrow