About
"This work is about You and Me. Victim and Instigator, dissipated by our ego. We're all part of this harmful circus."
Ellen de Meijer at Unix Gallery, standing next to 'Civil War' (2015)
1-on-1 interview (Amsterdam, 2023)
"The toughest struggle, is to live authentically."
Dutch contemporary artist Ellen de Meijer (b.1955) paints portraits of modern-day archetypes, as an expression of our collective struggles and lies.
They are an observation of society's harmful social structures and conventions that we all seem to adhere to, and according to the artist, also greatly impact our future generations. Each archetype represents both aggressor and victim, resulting in fake appearances, and convey separation from the true inner nature of mankind.
Recurring themes in her work are status and power, loss of emotion and authenticity, innocence, resistance, climate change, consumerism, competition, technology, and material wealth.
Ellen de Meijer resides and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
From a young age, Ellen de Meijer was fascinated by what we would now simply describe as ‘communication via image’. She started her artistic career in the realm of photography. Perhaps the most direct form of ‘the image’ at the time. After a short period in commercial photography she started to feel the urge to express more than just a captured image of reality, but to present a complete image – what she refers to as, 'the world of the seen and the unseen at the same time.'
To fulfill this desire, she at first turned to writing. She studied Dutch literature and started as a copywriter, only to find herself unsatisfied as writing alone lacked the strength of tangibility.
At the age of 28, she then turned to fine arts and was educated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Tilburg, the Netherlands. Illimitably fascinated by paint and all its possibilities, she plunged herself into painting with a visceral eagerness to explore every technical aspect and style she came across. Yet always with the goal of discovering a way to create her own, ultimate ‘complete image’.
Over the next 20 years, her then broad and ever-growing skill set, led her to teaching. She guided hundreds of art students in their work at her self-founded art school in Bussum, the Netherlands. She encouraged her students to seek their own signature, and led them through the ins and outs of the actual art of painting. Her school of art received attention throughout the Netherlands, but even more it provided a great learning opportunity to resolve barriers in other people's art work. During those teaching years, she again never lost sight of ultimately pursuing her own expression through paint. Her work can be found in various private collections throughout Europe.
In 2010, with the considerable experience she had gathered throughout the years, she decided it was time to forgo her teaching career and finally focus on crafting her own signature, clearly inspired by the old Dutch masters.
Representation by New York City gallery UNIX gallery provided her the opportunity to enter a global stage.
2022
- New York City, solo show, Lost and Found, Unix Gallery, New York, NY
- Selected for NADA Curated: Reduction to Satire (Reductio Ad Satura), an online exhibition by Fatos Ustek.
2019
- Aspen, auction, Art Crush
- Hong Kong, fair, Art Central
- New York City, solo show, #CO2, at UNIX Gallery
- New York City, group exhibition, Mad Summer, at UNIX Gallery
2018
- Delray Beach, museum group exhibition, Tech Effect, Cornell Art Museum
- New York City, group exhibition, at UNIX Gallery
- Palm Beach, fair, Palm Beach Modern + Contemporary, UNIX Gallery
2017
- Miami, fair - Art Miami, UNIX Gallery
- New York City, group exhibition - Mad Summer, at UNIX Gallery
- New York City, group exhibition - Future Anesthetics, at UNIX Gallery
2016
- Houston, solo show - Dissolution, UNIX Gallery
- New York City, group exhibition - You Can’t Always Get What You Want, UNIX Gallery
- Aspen, fair - Art Aspen, UNIX Gallery
- New York City, fair - Art New York, UNIX Gallery
2015
- New York City, solo show - Digital Divide, at UNIX Gallery
- New York City, group exhibition - Efflorescence, at UNIX Gallery
- New York City, fair - Art Miami, UNIX Gallery
- Singapore, fair - Art Stage Singapore, UNIX Gallery
- San Mateo, fair - Art Silicon Valley, UNIX Gallery
- Houston, fair - Texas Contemporary, UNIX Gallery
- Southampton, fair - Art Hamptons, UNIX Gallery
- New York City, fair - Art New York, UNIX Gallery, New York, NY
2014
- Miami, fair, Art Miami, UNIX Gallery,
- Ontario, fair, Art Toronto, UNIX Gallery
- Southampton, fair, Art Hamptons, UNIX Gallery
- Aspen, fair, Art Aspen, UNIX Gallery
1993 - 2010, select exhibitions
- Group show, Art Works, Amsterdam (the Netherlands)
- Solo show, Gallery Donkersloot, Aalsmeer (the Netherlands)
- Group show, Artes, Bussum (the Netherlands)
- Solo show, PaintBizz, Bussum (the Netherlands)
- Solo show, Gallery de Genieloods, Aalsmeer, (the Netherlands)
- Group exhibition, AIS, Beurs van Berlaghe, Amsterdam, (the Netherlands)