About Penelope van Hoorn
Biography
I don’t feel that I am consciously inspired by anything external. Instead, I feel as though I am inspired by the process. I apply colour and form as freely as I can, and then allow what’s on the canvas to suggest the next steps. The destination of the work always has to be “right” in itself, rather than “right” as a representation of something outside of itself.
Why this medium and style?
Is the style “abstract expressionism”? I’m happy with that. It’s abstract, in that it is not consciously inspired by anything external. But it probably does express something: when I say that I apply colour and form as freely as I can, I am implying that I don’t deliberately aim for something clinical and devoid of expression. So this is not cold abstraction, and I think you can tell this from most of my work. More prosaically, I like the boldness of acrylics, and they lend themselves well to an important aspect of my process, which is to work over an initial ground soon after it is finished, and then apply sometime several layers again as the picture makes its way to its final form.
The most important thing for me is a feeling of balance and naturalness. I want my paintings to feel like meaningful interventions and yet also like things that have always existed, or that could evolve naturally.
