The train runs to Amsterdam. Right in front of me is a young woman seated. She’s going home. Her bag full. A thick book on her lap. She reads. She looks outside. Smiling at a girl who asks her name. “Debora. Deb”, she says. “Deb” repeats the girl and hops to her seat.
Debora van der Vliet (born 1984 in Elst, the Netherlands) is a Dutch visual artist and illustrator living in Amsterdam. She received a Bachelors Degree in Media Arts from the University of the Arts, Utrecht. In her work she uses different materials to create a painterly world in which a dance between form and formlessness takes place. She is interested in what happens on the dividing line of where you as a person end and the world begins. To what extent do you let "that world" determine what form you should take as a person?
For her free works she starts with a philosophical question. She looks into different stories and visions that she can convert into a layered work that highlights the overall feeling. During the creative process experimentation into shape and color takes over. She gets into unpredictable associations that give an opportunity to challenge her only perception of the question.
Collage is in particular suitable for this because the paper guides her more than she directs it. It has its own plan. Like humans, the paper first tells one story and then she transforms it to let it tell another story. In her opinion, the stories we tell ourselves are often subjective and thus create our own personal myth in life.
‘Deb, Deb, Deb, Deb, Deb, Deb, Deb, Deb’, the girl repeats.