This is what Liesbert Bijkerk says on her work:
My starting point is not the visual reality, I do not depict anything. You could see my work as traces of memories. The inspiration can be something I have seen, or read, or heard. They can be personal experiences but also works of others: paintings, frescoes, drawings, texts, and musical pieces. After these things have occupied me directly for a while, they become mental impressions without tangible form. They detach from the sensory experience. With these kinds of impressions, I want to compose independent images, detached from everything that surrounds us daily.
Painting, for me, is creating: making something out of nothing. In the initial layers, I work with pigment, rabbit glue, and thin acrylic paint. I do not use photos or sketches. What happens on the canvas or paper is created in the moment when I work on it. In this process, I want to give randomness the maximum chance. Much of it happens associatively. One image almost directly follows from the other. This way of working gives me the greatest freedom. The painting does not always fit within the frame of the paper or canvas. Sometimes, I cut out the interesting pieces. When working on paper, they usually become collages. When working on canvas, I stretch the cut-out pieces on a smaller frame. After that, I add the final layers with oil paint. Here, I strive for maximum control. With oil paint, I can mix the exact colors I need to finish the canvas, and sometimes I use scraps of paper to find the right form. In an intuitive way, I search for the essence of the image. Each painting is like a puzzle without a reference picture. Gradually, it becomes clear how all the pieces should fit together. The final result is always more intense and powerful than the image I started with.
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