Elise Bikker

WORK & INFLUENCE

 

I am a visual artist, based in Chapel Haddlesey, England. I am interested in the often hidden parts of the human psyche. The analytical psychologist Carl Jung (1875-1961) defined the "Shadow" as part of the unconscious mind as the repressed, and therefore unknown, aspects of the personality. This shadow self is what I am currently exploring in my work. This often takes the form of hybrid creatures or a dark, solitary figure. I work across different media, though my current focus is on pastel drawings and sculptures in bronze.

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Being interested in meta-narratives, I consider myself a visual storyteller in search of meaning in hidden or parallel worlds. What I seek to capture in the material or image are archetypes, i.e. blueprints of universal truths which connect us to our deepest intuition and sense of meaning. Therefore, mythological characters recur in my work, such as winged creatures, the Minotaur and an ancient solitary figure, which respectively embody existential transcendence, unbridled, savage creativity and the Shadow self.

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Drawings

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My latest drawings accompany stories I write, often addressing the universal fabric of human existence: ever changing time and love, and the loss that inevitably follows. Much of my subject matter flows from trying to visualise these emotions. An ancient solitary figure recurs in my drawings, visiting places of his past in order to encounter anything that might feel familiar.

 

My current drawings explores the alienating qualities of monumental architectural structures that have been abandoned, such as brutalist water towers and power station cooling towers, or theatrical and exuberant Baroque interiors that are now devoid of people. These monumental empty spaces evoke a sense of unease, isolation or melancholia.

 

Paradoxically, it is the stillness and the unspoken interaction between the solitary figure and abandoned objects in these spaces - or between the objects themselves - which animates them and grants them an emotional or psychological weight. As material memories and metaphors of the human soul, these abandoned objects or spaces emphasise the transience of existence.

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​Sculpture

 

My sculptural series in bronze, titled Figures of Speech, consists of hybrid creatures that carry a certain character and symbolism within their bodies. Through their shapes, textures and gestures I aim to explore the boundaries that exist between existential states in order to expose uniquely human traits.

 

I prefer my creatures and forms to be primal, as if they've just materialised and the earth could take them back at any moment. Besides mythological creatures and man-animal crossovers, I am interested in the boundaries between humans and machines, both on a psychological and aesthetic level, since the crossing of boundaries often pinpoints the intrinsic essence of the thing or phenomenon that is being transgressed. This is related to the subject of my PhD in English on the representation of intelligent machines in nineteenth-century fiction.

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Rotterdam

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A desire to strip away surface layers and a penchant for symbolic interpretation often lead me towards minimalism, stylisation or abstraction. Rotterdam, the city in which I spent a considerable amount of my adult years, has been crucial for my artistic development. In this city I took classes in stone carving, drawing and painting in oil, which gave me a technical foundation in the mediums I work in.

 

The city itself has also been fundamental in my sculptural practice and my journey towards reduction. Because of the Dutch "percentage-rule", implemented in 1951, dictating that 1.5% of the budget of an important public building must be dedicated to the embellishment of the architecture in the form of visual art, there is a significant amount of sculpture in the public sphere, particularly from the 1950s and 60s when many Dutch and international sculptors experimented with abstraction. Seeing these works on a regular basis I believe shaped my passion for an unconstrained, "primitive" aesthetic.

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Romanticism, Modernism and folklore

 

My academic background is in history of art (MA) and English literature (Ph.D.).  These studies continue to be a source of inspiration. For example, in my drawings I am influenced by the richly imagined worlds and the dramatic use of colour and anatomy of William Blake's (1757-1827) watercolours, the Romantic and sublime sense of abandonment in the work of his contemporary Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), and the paintings by the symbolist artists Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) and Edvard Munch (1863-1944), who deal with the themes of love and loss in a somewhat abstracted manner. A contemporary artist I admire is Rolf Escher (born 1936), whose black and white drawings and graphic work of abandoned furniture in grand, abandoned rooms continue to speak to my imagination.

 

Besides the previously mentioned mid-century modern public art, I am deeply influenced by the early twentieth-century masters of modernism like Constantin Brancusi, Pablo Picasso and Julio González, who, through formal abstraction and distortion, drastically re-imagined ways of looking at the world. The later "CoBrA" art movement (1948-1951), which was founded after WWII, was preoccupied with spontaneous, free, childlike expression, experimentation and "primitive" folk art. Two artists associated with the movement are the Belgian metal sculptor Reinhoud d'Haese (1928-2007) and the Dutch ceramicist Lotti van der Gaag (1923-1999), both of whose folkloric subhuman creatures continue to have a deep impact on my sculptural work.

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For the creatures that populate my drawings or are embodied in my sculptures I draw heavily from mythology, folklore, literature, alchemical symbolism and other allegorical narratives. A contemporary phenomenon that deeply influenced me is the German Musical Tanz der Vampire, based on the 1967 comedy horror film The Fearless Vampire Killers/Dance of The Vampires, directed by Roman Polanski. The musical is a "Gesamtkunstwerk" of incredible music, dance, lighting, stage decor and costumes. The narrative evolves around time, love and finding or losing one's purpose. More than the film, the musical emphasises the perspective of the seductive, yet tortured, vampire Count Von Krolock. For me, particularly the embodiment of the count by Kevin Tarte - whom I had the good fortune to meet in 2023! - brings to life the duality of immortality: how, when one has conquered time and death, eventually nothing but loss remains.

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In my blog I expand on my influences and ideas on creativity and art. 

 

 

MATERIALS

 

​Pastel drawings and paintings

 

When an idea for a drawing forms, I tend to explore it in a single line-drawing until I find the right form. In the next stage I often add colour with soft pastels. I regularly use a combination of soft pastels , oil pastels and other mediums like charcoal. I prefer to work on darker paper, working from dark to light, much like working with oil paint. My oil paintings are often the final stage of exploring a subject. In these works I prefer to add physical texture as well through the use of different texture pastes and sand.

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Sculpture

 

In my sculptural practice I prefer to work in plaster maché and bronze. Plaster maché is what I call the mix of plaster, paper and other materials I devised to cover forms created in aluminium mesh. The paper adds strength and texture to the plaster. I tend to build my sculptures initially from clay or plaster maché. When I begin forming them,  I usually have a rough idea of how a sculpture will look, yet a large part of the process is intuitive. Sometimes I incorporate found objects into my work. When I decide to have work cast in bronze, from the early design stage onwards I communicate with the bronze foundry to make sure the piece is technically suitable for casting according to the lost wax method. The foundry is in a way a place of rebirth where, during the casting process, the frail wax or clay form is transformed into a strong body of bronze. What attracts me to bronze as a material is that its strength and weight evoke a sense of permanence and continuity.

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Glass

 

I am drawn to rich colour, which is what encouraged me to learn how to work with stained glass. The material limitations of leaded glass are conducive to a reductive aesthetic. The process of making a stained glass panel is one of careful planning and execution. However, my inclination towards a more spontaneous method and my love for heavily textured and expressive three-dimensional forms has led me to incorporate glass into my sculptures.

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