Overflowing with ideas
Marieke Helsen was born in Huissen (1967), where she lived until the age of seven. Together with her uncle, a lecturer at the art academy, she built giant installations using found objects at their home in Spain as a toddler. Art was also ever-present in the Netherlands. There was always clay work, needlework, painting, and drawing. The possibilities were limitless. However, when Marieke was 15 years old, she left that home. After passing her VWO exams, she did not dare to apply for the art academy, even though it was her great dream. She went on to study Anthropology. During her studies, she had a child and lost a child.
As a graduate Anthropologist, Museologist, and First-Degree Teacher, and as a single mother, she provided both the income and the upbringing. Despite working full-time, she always continued to paint between work and parenting. In 2021, Marieke Helsen secured one of the sought-after Krekelstraat Ateliers. Here, she let her creativity run wild. Additionally, she started at the art academy in 2023, and now she fills all her free time with painting, drawing, and working with fabric and plaster. She looks forward to the moment she can work in the studio full-time. She is overflowing with ideas that she wants to execute.
Title: The man behind the mask | Dimensions: 55 x 51 cm | Technique/material: Oil on cardboard | Created: 2025 | Price: €500
The place and time that a love occupies in real life and the place and time that a loved one occupies in our consciousness are different. The African mask here symbolizes the Rite of Passage, a (personal) cultural and spiritual identity and transition from one phase to another phase of your life. Living with a loved one and living without a loved one. Who is that loved one behind the mask? Who was the loved one behind the mask? Is the mask a disguise? Or is the mask itself a transformation tool to reach a next phase of life, in time and place?
Title: River forest high water Ooijpolder | Dimensions: 39 x 52 cm | Technique/material: Oil on cardboard | Created: 2024 | Price: €500
The Ooijpolder is a beautiful nature reserve. Marieke Helsen cycles through this polder almost daily. River forests on the outside of the river dike are breathtakingly beautiful during high water and form an endless inspiration for her photography and painting. Marieke has created a series in postcard format and A3 format using various techniques. This work, oil on cardboard, is inspired by a work made of bistre (walnut shell ink) on watercolor paper. The landscape is inspired by Japanese bamboo ink drawings. This combination of place and time, the short-lived high water in the river forest in the Ooij, mixed with Japanese visual language, makes this work a point of rest in a busy world.
Title: Her Blue/Hair blue | Dimensions: 90 x 120 cm | Technique/material: Oil on canvas | Created: 2026 | Price: €17,000
In Blue Hair/Her Blue, two fascinations come together. In 2017, Marieke traveled through Australia. Alone. The anthropologist came into contact with Aboriginal culture and art once again. Captivated by this beautiful art once more, she wanted to translate it, once home, into a combination of this art with another theme: Hair! Hair in its double meaning. The hair removal of women in popular Western culture and its meanings and depictions. For this painting, Marieke studied a great deal of body hair: she took photos of models and read books about body hair. The Hair is enlarged and abstracted into a map of the world, as is common in Aboriginal art.
Date:
16 maart 2026
