Antoinette van Brussel

Antoinette van Brussel has worked in her studio for more than twenty-five years and has exhibited nationally and internationally. She herself says that she was able to lose herself in making her work for years, but that 'exhibiting' was not her biggest hobby. For several reasons she stopped working in her own studio. In 2007 she spent three months as 'artist in residence' in Japan.

Between 1980 and 2007 she worked mainly with clay, but she also made small bronzes and worked with stone and other materials.

What fascinates Antoinette van Brussel is man and his eroticism, and contradictions that complement each other; man – woman, closeness – distance, creation – destruction, life – death. From naturalistic forms, universal forms are created in clay in which the mysteries of fertility, birth, life and death have been expressed throughout all time. Torsen are abstracted into idols and stelae, signs of potential as a sign of humanity.

As Van Brussel herself says: “The clay tells me stories and I tell my story to the clay.”