Rolina Nell

Rolina Nell (1968, the Netherlands) is a visual artist. She graduated in 2001 from the Academy of Fine Art and Design Minerva, Groningen, the Netherlands. Rolina exhibits her work regularly in the Netherlands and abroad. Rolina travels extensively and works in artist residencies world wide. To carry out her practice on a professional basis she was a.o. supported by The Mondriaan Fund. Rolina worked for several years in Rotterdam, the Netherlands at Duende studio's. Currently she lives and works at a farmhouse in the North East polder, the Netherlands. Rolina is member of the
board and curator of artists initiative id11.

“I find my inspiration through observation and interaction with the environment and daily life. Women take centre stage in my paintings and drawings and are isolated from her everyday environment. I concentrate on women and the female as a core subject by dealing with universal, existential questions of what the female can mean. Derived from my own femininity. Postures fixed in egg tempera on linen or with pencil/charcoal on paper. Painting and drawing are for me a form of (self) research, an awareness of being. It is not autobiographical story. The meaning of the work transcend the personal. Intuition and imagination play an important role in my work process. It is an attempt to grasp life and capture it and learn to understand it. In my paintings and drawings only gesture, fabric, patterns and appliqués of clothes as well as personal items are visible. The paint and the gesture of painting are discordant with the beautiful images and lead one to suspect subdued tensions. The absence of faces as a main human attribute leaves space for the exploration of female identities behind cultural codes. Identity is a key word in my work. Paintings and drawings where the identity remains mysterious.”