Painting and illustrating “Lekker Hollands”

Lekker Hollands (“lekker” Dutch)

With this project I wanted to show Dutch people how special we as Dutch people actually are . In the Netherlands we have a saying that is “ doe maar normaal dan doe je al gek genoeg” or “ Act normal, than you are crazy enough”. But we as Dutch people also have our specialties that we do not even know and take for granted. I was desperately trying to stay away from the obvious touristic way of looking at the Netherlands. This is how the journey started. I made 8 paintings with each 3 illustrations. Every painting comes back in the next painting and there is a hidden note in every painting. Like the cheese grater, you see the Dutch candy. And it has an engraving “N heart N” on it. Because we all think that the grater is Dutch but it actually is Norwegian. In the illustration there are some lines of everyday thoughts of live…to get back at the “act normal, then you are crazy enough”