TREES DE BOER
biography anchor
TREES DE BOER
BIOGRAPHY
Born
1953 Amsterdam
Residence
The Netherlands
Education
1974-1976 Bouman Academy-Education Teacher Drawing , Rotterdam, The Netherlands
1978-1983 National Academy of Visual Arts, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
ALONE AND YET CONNECTED – Less is More
LIFE AND WORK
Trees de Boer was born in 1953 in Amsterdam. She completed her artistic education in the field of “Free Painting” at the Rijksacademie voor Beeldende Kunsten Amsterdam. Her professors were – among others – Martin Postma, Jutta Metzger, Paul Husner, P.H. Ten Hoopen and Eric Claus. For her outstanding achievements as a graduate, she received the Willem Uriot Prize in 1982. Her works were shown at numerous exhibitions and are enclosed in important company collections in the Netherlands. Trees de Boer lives and works in Amsterdam.
FIGURATIVES
Initially, Trees de Boer’s work was influenced by traditional academic painting, which predominantly brought her commissions for portraits in her early career. Increasingly, however, she developed a more abstract language of forms, which now go along with a completely different pictorial style and a new implementation of painterly techniques.
One of her preferred motifs are places with people. Places where people linger or wait. It’s cafés, terraces, arrival or waiting halls at train stations or airports, where Trees de Boer finds her inspirations. These are the places where she directly sketches her impressions and captions, which will be elaborated later at her studio as paintings. People are standing, sitting or leaning against the counter and at tables, chatting animatedly or waiting in silence: “In a waiting room, people are thrown back on themselves, they are in a hurry or have to wait endlessly. Man is alone and yet connected “(Trees de Boer). This is the central theme in the oeuvre of the Dutch artist.
The imagery of her works goes hand in hand with the choice of painterly means that Trees de Boer reinvents for herself. She transforms the two-dimensional level of painting into a three-dimensional space by adding sand to the paint, generating relief-like surface structures. The contours that surround the figures often are applied to the canvas with rope or iron wire thus creating isolated forms that make the intellectual content directly – but nonverbally – tangible for the viewer. Quite frequently the representation in her paintings reaches beyond the limiting pictorial space, ropes and / or painting overlay the frame or transcend its border as plastic elements. As a further design element, the artist integrates words, titles or mental associations with wooden letters applied to the painting’s surface, which reinforce the connection between language and visual impression.
ENGAGED ART – COLLAGES AND MIXED MEDIA
In the late 1990s, Trees de Boer creates socially critical works, paintings with collages from magazines and newspapers. These deal with feminist tendencies in the Arab world and with the topic of immigrants. Specifically, these works anticipate topics that are more relevant than ever in our time. Here, too, Trees de Boer as an artist is clearly ahead of her time, and her pictures created at that time still integrate into our daily reality.
STILLIFE – FLOWERS AND OBJECTS
One of the prevalent motifs in the oeuvre of Trees de Boer is still life – plants, fruit and objects, which per se are subject to the persistence in the space. Even in this genre she applies the same criteria as in the figure image: silence, isolation, but also communication with the surrounding world. An eminently important role plays the choice of color itself. White is mixed with various colours or overlays them with a thin layer of paint. Light and warm tones lie above darker and cooler shades that shimmer through the uppermost layer and emerge as diffused nuances. Light and shadow are used simultaneously with this method and subtly revive the surfaces appearing in the overall picture.
SUMMARY
Through her distinctive, individual style and her painterly qualities, Trees de Boer creates highly idiosyncratic works that are complex in their statements, both with her figure paintings and with her still lifes. The still lifes function here as metaphors of human life in all its facets, they show the isolation and the individuality of a modern society, superficially following aesthetic aspects, but in terms of content and psychology, they clarify the characteristic features of our time, the isolation of the individual within a group. Alone and yet connected.
AWARDS/PRICES
1982 Willem Uriot Price
CORPORATE COLLECTIONS:
Mediated by Foundation Art & Communication ( ArtCircle, ArtCommunication and The ArtCommunicators )
-Ministery of Justice – Den Engh, Den Dolder, The Netherlands
-Gipsbouw, Utrecht, The netherlands
-CSM, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
-Elektrolux , Alphen aan den Rijn, The Netherlands.
-Congrex, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
-ANVR/SGR, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
-Ballast Nedam, The Netherlands
-Boston Consulting Groupe, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
-European Cultural Foundation, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
-SmitsAir Uithoorn, The Netherlands
-Voorbij Groep Wilnis, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
-Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
-TU Delft, Delft, The Netherlands
EXHIBITIONS
1979
-Kriterion, Amsterdam
1980
-De Appel, Amsterdam (solo)
1983
-Tribe Gallery, Amsterdam (solo)
1984
-Centraal Beheer Apeldoorn
-Rijksacademie van Beeldende Kunsten
-Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam
1985
-The Grashopper, Amsterdam (solo)
1986
-Galerie Overtoom, Amsterdam (solo)
-Kantoorhandel Jager, Aalsmeer
1987
-NIVRA, Amsterdam (solo)
1988
-Luden, Den Haag (solo)
1989
-Oude Raadhuis, Aalsmeer (solo)
1990
-Kunstrai, Amsterdam
1991
-Kunstgreep ‚Rai‘, Amsterdam
1992/93
– CSM Diemen (duo)
1994
-Park Gallery, Hoorn (solo)
1995
-De Sloof, Beverwijk (solo)
1996
-Ballast Nedam hoofdkantoor, Amstelveen
1997
-Cool – Art – Fair, Baarn
1999
-Kunstmanifestatie Dordt Monumenteel, Dordrecht
2000
-Stradmeijer-Grajer, Heemstede (solo)
-Galerie Retina, Amsterdam
2001
-Ahoy, Rotterdam
-Art Village Roelofarendsveen
-Kunstbeurs, Eindhoven
2006
-Sigarenfabriek, Delft
2012
-Kunstroute Amsterdam
2013
-Art Hotel Amsterdam (solo)
2014
-Open Ateliers Oost, Amsterdam
2019
-Art Amsterdam Spui (since 2012)
MEDIA
CATALOG “ALONE AND YET CONNECTED” – Less is More
Catalog produced in 2019 by Foundation Art & Communication ( The ArtCommunicators )
Trees de Boer is registered at the RKD – Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis (Dutch Institute for Art History), The Hague