Marenne Welten is a multidisciplinary artist who paints, makes collages, and video-works that investigate memory, emotion, and associated meanings. They are the outcome of an immersive process in which the artist draws upon extensive research and her own ‘memory palace’. It is through the slight window of semblance that her imaginations emerge. Subconsciously and intuitively, she balances between the logical and illogical, taking from universal stories and finding interfaces with her own memories. It is a process of layering and unraveling; of gradual spontaneity. Without any expectation for a certain end-result she dismantles her mind’s image into pieces, allowing fragments to emerge from her mind to carve itself into the thick oil paint. She calls into being new meanings, new associations, new contexts for previously closed chapters: those of family tragedy, of physical spaces, of journeys travelled. It is a gentle (re-)awakening, a delicate kiss of life. Everyday scenes and sentiments are depicted with tenderness, melancholy, sometimes even echoing a sense of nostalgia.
Welten’s paintings challenge traditional ways of perception. Color, movement, depth, and scale almost literally slip away into the layers of dark and light oils. Wayfinding with streaks of vibrant and pastel color, the emphasis on letting her imagery appear from intuition becomes ever clearer. The objects, patterns, and spatial dimension almost seem to overtake any sense of demarcation around the subject. Proportionally her works eye askew: subjects bend their bodies to fit the frame and the furniture swings; as if we’ve caught them in a dance. She has a solid style brushstroke, yet it leaves room for a feeling of featheriness. Countering convention she makes the paint accommodate the canvas, instead of the canvas accommodating the paint.
Marenne Welten (1959, Valburg, NL) lives and works in Middelburg. She graduated from the School of Art & Design St Joost in Breda Her work has been shown in solo and group presentations in the Netherlands and abroad, including exhibitions at Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Germany (2006), Kunsthalle Lingen, Germany, (2008), Kunstverein GFjK, Baden-Baden, Germany (2013), Museum De Pont, Tilburg (2013/14), Stedelijk Museum Breda (2021). Welten’s work is is part of public and private collections in the Netherlands and abroad.