World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 508 - Marja Zomer

World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 508 – Marja Zomer

I saw Marja Zomer at work in Het Archief in Rotterdam. There she made portraits on the spot. With the faces straight forward. In less than fifteen minutes, to be precise in 13 minutes per portrait. A total of 82 pieces that looked similar, but on closer inspection also differed greatly, in terms of background color, materials used and facial expression.

I visited her in her studio in the Van Oldenbarneveldtstraat, the storage place of Maria Roosen’s work, in Arnhem. The stove is burning brightly, above us hangs a chandelier of porcelain, cup-like round shapes. To my left a kind of round bathroom. Both works by Jan Broekstra, the deceased husband of Maria Roosen.

A portrait begins with …

Marja is wearing a green jacket, with red-yellow flames. She embroidered them on to close the burn holes – from the welding of her ship Jannetje, more about that later – she says.

How did she start the portrait drawings, with the nose perhaps? “No, not with the nose. Sometimes when a person was wearing glasses with the glasses, sometimes with expressive eyes, sometimes with the eyebrows, sometimes the egg-shaped head. Generally, that which first strikes me about a person.” She looked at the drawings at home with a photo she had taken of the person, and finished the drawing if necessary. Some of the people portrayed thought they were too strict looking, but most were very pleased with the result.

She started with portraits in 2017; she drew and painted her mother on her deathbed. Later she also drew the body of her deceased mother. Before that she had drawn a self-portrait every now and then. “It developed. I started painting my friends, my family. That continued. I like it, it is a challenge. It has to look like the person, but it should not be a mess. To challenge myself I sometimes use opaque paint, sometimes transparent. Or I use different colours of background.”

Trees

In addition, the exhibition included tree drawings and water landscapes. For her, the tree is actually a portrait too, full of lines, bulges and eyes. “I was born in a house on the Bosweg in Lochem, next to the forest. I always had the trees around me. When I went for a walk with the dog, I walked past those trees, which I got to know as entities. Later I also went to a certain bend in the IJssel. All places where I feel good. In the summer, my ship Jannetje is often in the Loowaard, east of Arnhem. The bridge of the new section of the A15 motorway will soon be crossing it. It is now a wild area. On board I make small works, I draw the old willows – with many reflections – and the land behind them, and later I work that out on a larger scale if necessary.”

Next to her space in the Van Oldenbarneveldtstraat is a ceramics workshop with a kiln. She is now working on a series of Dutch monumental trees on porcelain, she draws the tree in the wet clay. She fills the groove with black glaze. She shows the drawing and the plate with the work on it.

How would she describe her theme?

“Beauty is the engine. It’s about the world around me. I see something and I’m moved. Then comes the technique. Colored pencil? Paint? Porcelain? I research that. I take a lot of photos, of landscapes, trees, cows, horses.” I see a painting of a young black foal on the bank with some thin trees in the evening light behind it. “He had broken out and gone wild. I made friends with him, I gave him rye bread. There was also a herd of Konik horses walking around, they were aggressive towards him. He was lame.”

She also makes sculptures. On her website I see, among other things, her mother’s coffin, full of flowers with the forest in the background. “My mother made beautiful wall hangings and special clothes for herself. She was actually a textile artist.” Most of the sculptures are objets trouvés, pieces of wood that float to her and found things that she continues with.

Does Marja have a key work?

After the Arnhem art academy, she went to the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht in 1989, where she did a master’s degree. “I went to a hut in the Ardennes for a week to draw trees. When I drew a particularly characterful tree, and followed the tension in the lines of the trunk, I suddenly understood how Cézanne had looked, with curved lines and volumes, ‘building’. When I’m happily drawing these days, I feel the excitement I felt then again.”

After the Jan van Eyck she was able to work with various grants and work scholarships. She made a lot of work and that was picked up by various collections, among others work ended up in the city collection of Rotterdam in the Boymans.

A year as kitchen manager

Around the turn of the century, however, she got stuck. She then worked for a year at AVL Ville (of Joep van Lieshout). “I managed the restaurant and the kitchen there for a year. It was the year of Rotterdam Cultural Capital (2001). There were 20/30 people working there. Van Lieshout promoted an autarkic life. There were more people working there who had a ship on which they lived. That seemed like something for me too, such a moving life, being able to travel. I bought an old Urk cutter, hull.”

Making the ship habitable, building the entire infrastructure, the interior, designing and building a ‘tiny house’ in a steel shell in the limited space, was a big job. She was busy with it for about five or six years (and still sometimes). “I love welding, flame cutting, and building in 3D. I have become a lot more technical over the years. Building was an enrichment for painting. But in the end it is the same, 2D or 3D, it is done with the same view and ideas.

I paint and draw the ship and the things on board now too. Traveling with the ship is inspiring. Other landscapes, other places. Lots of the rivers Lek, Rijn and IJssel. The forests and trees around it. Other artists do that through residencies. I live the romantic image of an artist. I am a romantic artist.”

Finally, what is her philosophy?

Marja: “I paint and draw the things and people I love, that move me, but I also believe that in the end it is about how the paint, the line, the looking, the light, things like composition and beauty come to an image that is more than the sum of the parts.”

Images

1) Peerdje (little horse) 2024, oil 82x120cm, 2) 13 minute drawing A4, 3) Autumn, color pencil 20x20cm, 4) UK120, drawing 30x40cm, 5) Gat van Gorssel (Gorssel lake) , oil 120x73cm, 6) Morningstroll, ipad drawing, 7) Mother, oil 30x40cm 2019, 8) Portraits, oil, each 20x40cm, 9) View from aboard, oil 120x200cm 2024, 10) portrait Marja Zomer.

https://marjazomer.nl/
https://marjazomer.nl/oog-in-oog-in-het-archief/
https://www.instagram.com/marja_zomer/
https://inzaken.eu/2025/01/18/marja-zomer-ik-ben-een-romantisch-kunstenaar/