In BREUKEN we show visual works of three different artists: Caren van Herwaarden, Karin Peulen, Anne Semler and Elizabeth de Vaal.

Caren van Herwaarden was educated at AKI in Enschede, now ArtEZ (1986) en Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. She makes monumental water colours, drawings and three dimensional collages. ‘… Van Herwaardens drawings and collages reach and touch deep. Right through her restrained images she draws us to the heart of primal emotions, where loneliness and fear, love and security fight for priority…’ – Meta Knol, director of Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden.

Karin Peulen studied at Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts (1992)  en Universitat de bellas artes in Barcelona. She now works as a tutor at Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts. She uses nature as an impulse for her work; art and nature flow experimentally together. In ongoing projects she shows how memories and natural images influence each other. The works shown in Breuken (Divisions) originate in an experiment where tups with different colours of wax under their bellies leave a rich colour palette on the ewes during mating season.

Anne Semler studied at the Academie voor Beelden Kunst in Arnhem, now ArtEZ (1970). Her work evokes a still world which is just as personal as it is universal, suggesting the artist’s strong visual memories of her youth. Anne Semler grew up in a special nature reserve in the Veluwe. Unsentimental and clear eyed, she weighs up what she can use for her drawing. Thus she goes treasure hunting in the archives of her mind. She draws animals and people, but turned away though from the  spectator.

Elizabeth de Vaal was educated at Willem de Kooning Academie in Rotterdam (1975) and De Ateliers. Right now she makes smaller works, gouache/pencil/ink on paper. She usually works in series which originate in a major event in her life, which itself remains off the picture but sets her off in search for an all embracing work. The search is the process, the works are the deposit.