Josje Thissen

Born in Heerlen and started as a handicrafts teacher at the MBO, Josje Thissen (1944) established herself as an independent artist in Genk in 1994, after completing the evening course at the Academy of Visual Arts in Maastricht (1982) and the Ceramics course at the Municipal Academy of Plastic Arts.

During her studies she experimented with different materials including wood, metal, stone, wax and clay. After her studies, she quickly developed a preference for the conceptual direction. Objects from the immediate living environment that have an interesting shape, color or structure form the source of inspiration. Natural shapes, which take on a new dimension by adding creative additions or adjustments.

Some designs are cast in bronze, others remain in the original material. The design varies from pure abstraction to abstracted images in which she tries to express as much as possible with as few details as possible, so that the observer has optimal space for his own interpretation.

In the design of her entire oeuvre, Josje Thissen follows the conviction of Ossip Zadkine (1890-1967) who says: “One must capture the essentials of nature, accentuate the intrinsic truth of the object, know how to underline some shapes, in order to of the outer world.