“If only I could paint” is a photographic exploration that blurs the boundaries between painting and photography.
Through my ongoing series Portraits of a Flower and Portraits of the Sea, I seek to capture the essence and emotional power of painting and drawing through photography, exploring both stillness and movement. I draw inspiration from Jan Mankes and other Neo-Realists.
Color plays a crucial role in both series. I capture the most beautiful combinations of color and form, aiming to invite the viewer to pause for a moment and appreciate the beauty in the everyday.
In a world where digital perfection is increasingly becoming the norm, Portraits of a Flower is my return to the pure, the fleeting, and the wonderfully real. This dreamlike series is an ode to the timeless beauty and individuality of flowers.
I draw inspiration from the long history of art in which flowers have played a significant role—not merely to capture them as objects of beauty, but to portray them as subjects with their own stories and emotions.
Each flower in this series is photographed as if it were a human portrait. With great attention to color and composition, I allow their vulnerability, strength, and uniqueness to speak. The images are soft and dreamy, with a touch of melancholy—as if you’re stepping into another world. The light, shadow, texture, and atmosphere lend the images a painterly quality—and yet you see: it’s a photograph.
The Portraits of the Sea series was born from my daily walks with the dogs along the northern coast of Scheveningen. This series is an almost poetic search for the point where photography and painting begin to blur — a space where image becomes emotion. My intention is not to show what the sea looks like, but rather what it feels like — as a memory, as a moodscape. In this way, I aim to transform the external landscape into an internal one. What the viewer encounters are not simply beach scenes, but visual metaphors for states of mind.
Not two days are the same — at times turbulent and full of life, at others silent and desolate. The color palette changes from day to day. The wind and water are in constant motion, yet the images breathe stillness, like a painted canvas made of soft, changing layers.
The light, fading lines, a lack of sharpness, and the gentle suggestion of movement evoke a painterly impression — and yet we know: this is a photograph.
It is precisely in that in-between space, that suspended moment between what is seen and what is felt, where I most love to work.
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