Artist statement
2024
Driven by the art of ‘wholeness’, Dolian translates her multimedia practice into visual arts. Playful paintings that, enhanced by poetry, ceramics and ‘textiles’, create authentic and deeply felt work.
She knows existence to be ‘as one’; nature, animals and human, all from this earth and incessantly connected to everything. ‘There are so many wonderful stories to tell and so many different ways to do so’. Through travelling this earth and experiencing new ‘habitat’ this only becomes clearer and clearer to her. Authenticity in wholeness. This fascinates and inspires her, illuminates like a thousand inner candles. Her continuous art manifesto; ‘Lewendig’, is in Dolian’s words; all encompassing. Starting with ‘wholeness’ as ground inspiration, she explores inter alia; nakededness, sex(es), ground, habitat, instinct, duality, raw authenticity and rituals. To learn and teach.
From living (in diverse environments), Dolian draws most of her inspiration. As one of her latest works Jezebel’, illustrates her journey through Portugal. Its fertility, mystery, stillness, and vibrancy. You see a naked woman hanging a garment of lace swans on a clothesline. From the clothesline hangs underwear incorporating the yin-yang sign, corresponding to the Stork flying towards the end of the canvas. The women stands under a tree filled with ripe oranges and the full moon shines through the black branches winding from the lake.
Dolian works with different paints and mediums and often uses natural materials such as raw tree trunks that function as frames. She is always looking for dualities. At the moment she prefers to work with gouache, water and very thin brushes. In search for the combination of precise and sketchy in her playful work.
Her work embodies joy and love, with an underlying idea of transformation and growth. ‘Causing vibrations to the soul, like the purring of a cheetah’. She likes to play with words, alternating poetic tekst with double meanings and creating ‘a language beyond language’. A mix of reality and her dream/fantasy world. What happens around her combined with symbolism and highlighted in colour combinations that inspire her. From the movement of flowers or laundry in the wind, nature’s wonders and disasters, the sun on the sea, or reflected in a pane of glass. Our dreams, fears, “taboos”. Everything raw and real. She likes to question that; what is ‘real’?, what is ‘beautiful’?
Because of her longing to ‘make the human world a little more beautiful’, her atelier has known many forms and places around the world: Alongside the ‘Master G’s’ in factories in New Delhi (India), in the middle of the Zena’s (cheetah) enclosure in rehabilitation centre in Bloemfontein (South-Africa). A floating hut above the clear blue ocean of the App Island (Philippines). On a roof-terrace in the middle of Kathmandu’s, (Nepal) vibrancy. A temple hiding from the blizzard in Lo Manthang (Boarder of Tibet). A yurt accompanied by the sheep in Portugal. Through her art she shares the colourful stories she encounters across the world, to inspire the remembrance of our wholeness and thus, connecting the world little by little.
Dolian Oosterman (b. 1995, The Netherlands) lives and works around the world. Currently based in Amsterdam. Her work consists of multidisciplinary artistic expressions in which, atm, painting plays the ‘leading role’. Through her continuous manifesto Lewendig’, she shares her colourful art inspired by ‘wholeness’; nature, animal and human being one.