Nanon C. F. Morsink – Mixed Media artist

11-08-1964 the Netherlands, living in Spain.
Graduated: 1995 Artez Art Academy Enschede, the Netherlands.

“THIS WORLD IS WILD AT HEART AND WEIRD ON TOP” – David Lynch.

Nanon calls herself a mixed media artist because she works with many different materials and techniques. However, lately she has mainly been working with textile materials. She paints on pre-printed fabrics, sometimes uses embroidery on them and knits objects.
‘Woman’ is the most recent theme in Nanon’s work. She makes many portraits of women, not so much to represent them as realistically as possible, but to give a kind of reflection of ‘the woman’. Nanon: “Maybe I am all those portraits together myself?”

Characteristic of all work is that there always seems to be something in between the spectator and the depicted. There is always a layer in between so that the depicted is never completely visible, it does not expose itself completely. But therefore, the spectator can never be fully perceived from the point of view of the person portrayed. It’s a kind of conversation between the two of them; there remain mutual secrets, built-in security, own interpretations, etc.
Sometimes, such an intermediate layer is a painted layer with a pattern from the background that has been painted back over the foreground image. Sometimes, Nanon embroíders this background pattern over the painted image. And in the case of the knitted objects, there is often a covered face with no facial features visible.
The women depicted are always strong characters who often look at you frontally behind their ‘voile’, but at the same time they have a kind of vulnerability.

Nanon is from The Netherlands, but since 2017 she is working in Spain where she currently lives. She regularly exhibits in Spain, The Netherlands and beyond. In September 2019, her work was shown at the World Textile Biennial in Madrid where she was awarded with the second price for ‘Photography Textile Art’, and she recently exhibited in Chicago, Illinois.