Ellen Grael Being an Artist 4, 2019

I am a Dutch artist who lives and works in Amsterdam. My artistic career is influenced by several masters from different eras. The many renowned Italian, French and Japanese masters.

I started drawing at a very young age at the age of eight and took my first attempts at serious model drawing. My father gave me his anatomy book and several art books. He was very ambitious in developing my talents. At eleven, I had to choose between Art and go to The Hague Ballet Academy. I felt like young to leave my parents every week, the reason why my choice was easy to make the choice for art. In my teenage years I took private lessons with a number of different artists who taught all kinds of techniques such as oil painting, landscape drawing and most importantly, the ink technique. washed.

At seventeen, I went for my first study to visit Italy, admiring the work of Renaissance artists such as Michelangelo, Botticelli, del Sarto and many other famous artists. I was in awe of the overwhelming beauty and a new world opened my artistic eye and was a great influence on my techniques, career and inner world of experiences. In high school, I wrote a thesis on Impressionists and Expressionists.

When I was eighteen I went to the Academy of Fine Arts in Groningen, a good classical education where I learned, for example, to make my own paintings in oils, acrylics and inks. I studied Japanese ink washing techniques and doing a thesis on Ukio -E and was particularly focused on pattern drawings and engraving techniques. Invited by the Academy of Fine Arts, our students went to Florence and Paris. Besides famous Italian artists I was impressed by the number 18 th and 19 th century French pastelmasters, like Degas, Redon and Quentin de la Tour with their strong - valid vivid colors of works of art on paper. Inspired by this master's degree, I finished Art School with my own technique invented on paper, a mixture of washed ink, charcoal and pastels. I am still using in my recent Pastelpaintings with a picturesque effect. The description 'Pastelpainting' is coined in the 18th century because the pastels on the paper looked like a painting. In fact, pastels are pure pigments pressed (to make paint) with very little binder. Over time, the colors will continue to have the same radiant shine. I like this.

My affinity with nature is another strong influence that started young. I had posters hung on the wall in my room with Green Peace and worried about the fragile biotope of the Waddenzee in the north of the Netherlands. Every Sunday I went with my parents to the woods of Friesland and the south of the Netherlands. I remember that I was 5 years old, that I had a rather Spartan education, that I walked very cold in the snow and that I had to keep walking. When I was young, I started drawing directly after nature, smelling the fresh air and the scents of grass, wood, plants and trying to make a good impression on paper. This year, I found a note accompanied by a drawing, when I made during a vacation in Ardèche de France, with the text that I wanted to be more in contact with nature so that I finally feel happier ...

After Beaux-Arts school I moved to Amsterdam and took a lot of walks in the dunes by the sea, relaxing and taking a lot of snap shots. The beautiful, ever-changing landscapes along the Dutch North Sea. But also admire the many flowers and wild plants along the many canals, gardens and parks.