Nr. 1 in our new series, Great Heroes: "observation & abstraction"

Welcome to our “Great Heroes” series. In this collection of stories, we take you into the world of the people who motivate and inspire our team every day. You will be introduced to our personal heroes.

By sharing these stories, we invite you to get to know our team in a more personal way. Discover which pioneers, artists and thinkers have shaped us, and why their work continues to inspire us in our own creative journey.

Lieke's great Hero:

Dorine van der Ploeg

Heerlen, 1983

Dorine is a Dutch artist known for her unique approach to collage art. She combines her realistic background with a free, experimental style. Her work is a continuous exploration of observation and abstraction, using painted paper and cardboard layers to represent reality in her own peculiar way.

Her work moves me as an interior designer in a special way. She observes her surroundings and manages to reduce them to their essence in her abstract representation.

With her choreographic perspectives of oblique lines, planes and shapes, she guides the viewer through her composed worlds. With the sophisticated play of light and shadow that defines space.

What fascinates me is her color palette, the balance between tension and harmony. The muted tones that seem to whisper, and the bright colors with pronounced firmness. This tension creates a visual dynamic that makes the work fascinating.

Her way of working surprises and deepens, somewhere it feels like a spontaneous composition but nothing is by chance, it is thought out. The longer you look at it, the more you are drawn into the work. You discover nuances of color and rhythms of line play. Unexpected details become visible. The textures of the different types of paper emerge. And the play of layering that makes her compositions so special.

That ability to go back to the essence, from context to abstraction, from observation to imagination and to dare to play with space, contrast and material, that is what inspires me.