MELANCHOLY / VANITAS

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In this series, I reinterpret certain motifs that have been used for centuries in Vanitas and/or Melancholy paintings; skulls, drapery, flowers, glass, jewels, burning candles—and reinterpret them in a contemporary context.

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In these works, I replace the seriousness that prevails in historical works with a refined irony and a touch of “grotesque”, and often, a game of reflections and distortions is played. See for example in Melancholy – Fontainebleau, 2025.

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Heavy velvet curtains from classical Vanitas paintings become contemporary textiles with polka dots or shiny, silver-colored textiles in my paintings. Burning candles become light bulbs as in Vanitas - Silver Curtain #2, 2024. Glass globes, as often seen in Vanitas paintings, are in my work referenced with less seriousness. The glass globe in Garden of Earthly Delights - after Hieronimus Bosch, 2023, captures a distorted, illusory reflection of a strange, exotic giraffe and the couple Adam and Eve, as seen in ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’ by Hieronymus Bosch. In another work a reflection in a globe takes the form of a ‘smiley’: Smiley, 2025.

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In recent paintings from 2025 and 2026, redcurrants (a symbol of vitality, fertility, and joie de vivre) are juxtaposed with references to death: a skull in Ribes rubrum pro A. Coorte, 2025, or a Man of Sorrows in Toccata/Stigmata- after Albrecht Bouts, 2026. In Pompeii Carpe Diem,2025, a skeleton depicted in a mosaic is given a grotesque makeover.