Paintings by Wilma van Weijen-van Iersel

This exhibit is now over. The prices, dates, places and external hyperlinks on this page are not maintained and may no longer be accurate.

Wilma van Weijen-van Iersel (Rotterdam, 1952) wanted to attend the Art Academy after her high school years in the sixties, but life took a different route.

For several decades, she assisted 'creative hotshots' in the world of advertising, broadcasting and the media (specifically film and video)
Initially, drawing and painting, were all pursued in her spare time. At the start of the new millennium, Wilma chose to enrol in a more serious art course.
Since then her ideas have been incorporated in several different art projects. Working with textiles is important, the canvas being the ultimate inspirational material, often incorporating collages and texts.

Inspiration and motivation for this Africa series started sometime in 2002, with a single wooden panel and a newspaper clipping about unruly boys …. somewhere in Africa…. Wilma’s thoughts were: “We as the western world should feel ashamed that we are making such a feeble attempt at dealing with Africa’s problems!”
From then on she collected all kinds of photo’s from different newspapers and incorporated their often heart wrenching stories in a series of paintings.

What started as a careful attempt to visualize the often problematic situation in Africa and thereby `paint away her sad feelings`… turned into a series of paintings which at first were only on display for a small circle of friends. Encouraged by the many reactions Wilma finally took a big step and organized her first solo exhibition. Burkin´Art Gallery followed and so did several other Art Events. Artwork such as cards and a poster were made of some of the paintings.

Because Wilma had many opportunities and possibilities in her life, she wanted to be able to create those possibilities for other people as well. Therefore it felt very natural to have the proceeds from the sales of this Africa series benefit small scale aid projects in Africa.

For more information van.weijen@wxs.nl

The paintings hanging in the corridors and the library of the African Studies Centre in the Pieter de la Court building, Wassenaarseweg 52, Leiden are all for sale.
The exhibition is open weekdays from 9:00 – 17:00 until 1 February 2007. Feel free to come and take a look!

'Goldminer' (sold)		'AIDS' (€ 550)
		'Mineworker' (€ 500)
'Unruly Boys' (€ 300)