World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 208 - Margot Klein Tiessink

 

World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 208 – Margot Klein Tiessink
In the living room of Margot Klein Tiessink I see a large painting of an older Surinamese man, sitting on a chair with kites above him and a boy holding one. The man is one of Margot’s clients, she combines painting with home care.

I am visiting Margot Klein Tiessink in the Amsterdam River district. There are more paintings in her front and back room. In the front room a painting with a boy lying on a couch, the second layer of the painting is an aquarium with fish, suggesting the viewpoint of a fish as it were. Quite special, a painting from the perspective of the fish.

Multidimensional world
This also applies to other paintings by Margot, everywhere you see layers on top of each other, the material treatment and the colourful depiction generate a fabric feel, thus implying depth in the painting. It looks like a maze and you’re automatically attracted to start looking, because there is so much to see and discover. Margot Klein Tiessink: “I draw that second layer with an old-fashioned dip pen. The layers painted over each other create a multidimensional world. This creates an image that makes multiple interpretations imaginable and offers the possibility of transforming the spectator’s view.”

“My work is in close analogy to the present-day amount of images flooding our daily lives. The driving force in my work is the desire for what was, is, and can be. Fiction as memory, memory as fiction.”

The documentation of her work is on the table. I see a painting with an elderly Hindustani woman who’s looking out the window of her house with a pillow in her neck. Strings of tropical plants and trees meander over the entire painting. At the bottom of the work you see a wooden house on a river where this lady used to live in. There is a rowing boat. Top right a bird cage with a bird. Geese in the windowsill. Margot: “This lady got homesick for her Surinam as many people do when they grow older and long for their homeland. She herself had a birdie, but couldn’t keep it to her great sorrow because of allergies. It is also a reference to the Surinamese men that sometimes can be found in the park during summer, the birds compete to find out which one sings the best. By portraying her in her own house on the Albert Cuyp market and projecting her memories as layers over each other the images merge together into a painting”.

Variation
In another painting I see a sparrow, a breadbasket and all kinds of objects on a table. Tea is served. Also flowers and plants in delicate thin lines. A sparrow she had photographed is the basis of the painting; a breakfast table has been drawn over the first layer. “You used to see them everywhere. Unfortunately they are disappearing in Amsterdam, one of the many causes is people no longer have tablecloths, shaking them out with crumbs still on. The painting is an ode to the sparrow. It was on show during the Big House Sparrow Exhibition in the Natural History Museum in Rotterdam. ”* The painting ‘Musing’, which is depicted on a printed card, was purchased for the art collection of The House of Representatives, part of the bicameral parliament of the Netherlands in The Hague.

Photos form the basis for a painting. She usually takes the photos herself. Margot alternates painting with home care. A week of painting, a week of home care for her regular expenses as the art practice often is very uncertain. But it’s a good combination, she even experiences it as a pleasant variation. “When you paint, you are working concentrated on your own seeing people or speaking with them is scarce. Working in home care means meeting many different people, in the most wondrous environments being the daily habitat for the residents and you hear a lot of stories. This inspires me.”

Key work
Does she have a key work, a work that was the starting point of a new direction? She has. It is a painting that was purchased by the Centre for the Arts in Groningen **. “I completed my education at the Minerva art academy in Groningen with poster-like realistic images. After my graduation I was searching, this resulted in a period in which I only used charcoal. Large, abstract and then abstract pen drawings and paintings. At a certain point, it was in 1996, I projected an abstract drawing onto an old canvas with a figurative representation already on it. I thought I could reuse the size of the canvas for an abstract drawing so I putted it to the test. The images merged unexpectedly. ‘Wow,’ I thought, ‘how beautiful.’ This can be a new start ’. Then the use of realism fell into place for me. It has developed into a technique in which realistic images blend leading to a certain degree of abstraction, thus creating the possibility to look at and interpret a painting in many different ways.”

Margot Klein Tiessink is a late-bloomer as an artist. She lived in Emmen where she worked as a zoo-keeper after which she started working as a veterinary assistant. At the age of 28 she decided to go to the art academy in Groningen. “It was a reputable education, I learned a lot, with a great deal of attention for theory of colour and composition, model drawing and the possibility to choose graphics. I did that for a while, I studied lithography with renowned lithographer Wim Jonkman.” The academy was known for its realism with artist’s teachers such as Wout Muller and Matthijs Röling. But her sense of colour resonated with the work of the well-known Groningen artist Martin Tissing who recently passed away. His poetic work in which colour plays a leading role and his inspiring stories from the artistic practice made her decide to graduate under his supervision alongside Rotterdam artist Olphaert den Otter ***.

Story without end
We go upstairs to her studio and storage place. I see a lot of little pots filled with oil paint. And a dip pen. The first image is painted, the second layer is drawn with dip pen and oil paint, the cotton canvas horizontal on the table. “Cotton is solid and I find it very pleasant to work on.” She has armrests in various sizes in order not to touch the canvas with her hand or arm when she’s drawing the second layer on the canvas. I look outside and see many courtyard gardens and in the distance a small piece of the Amstel river and the former newspaper buildings. Margot thinks it’s a fantastic view. “Right now in the evening the starlings gather in the gardens, it’s a fascinating sight and in summer the bats fly during twilight. ”
Finally, if she would summarize it briefly, what’s the core? Margot: “I am looking for an endless story in which I am ultimately the conductor.”
Images
1) photo of the artist, 2) Lion – 95 x 80 cm – oil paint on canvas, 3) Reflection – 80 x 120 cm – oil paint on canvas, 4) Nostalgia – 80 x 95 cm – oil paint on canvas, 5) Dreamworld – 80 x 90 cm – oil paint on canvas, 6) Sparrow – 70 x 90 cm – oil paint on canvas, 7) Cat – 52 x 62 cm – oil paint on canvas, 8) the Kiss – 80 x 120 cm – oil paint on canvas, 9) Inner Vision – 120 x 90 cm – oil paint on canvas, 10) studio + pots + view

 

www.galeries.nl/kunstenaar.asp?artistnr=62585
www.artolive.nl/kunst/652-margot-kleintiessink 
https://www.saatchiart.com/wilhelmina
*https://www.hetnatuurhistorisch.nl/exposities/geweest/geweest-2007/de-grote-huismus-tentoonstelling.html
**https://www.kunstuitleengroningen.nl/digitale-catalogus/detail/q/task/search/id/331004
***https://ifthenisnow.eu/nl/verhalen/de-wereld-van-de-rotterdamse-kunstenaar-10-olphaert-den-otter
https://ifthenisnow.eu/nl/verhalen/de-wereld-van-de-amsterdamse-kunstenaar-53-margot-klein-tiessink