Mayke Sassen - Provence, France

image A visual artist I studied the Beaux Arts and Theater in Amsterdam, although essentially an autodidact, I was influenced by the COBRA, notably by Corneille. I was a drama teacher for years before dedicating exclusively to visual arts. At my website http://www.maykesassen.com one can see the very eclectic nature of my work influenced by these different life experiences, the different worlds in which I have lived and expressed my art.

I call my style "Realistic" since I, as the observer, change the actual world around me, the world and I interact, I reveal a reality that is behind visible things.
Through an independence of mind and eye,

I see my work providing an expression with innocent sophistication, simplification, often a modern expressionistic style with storytelling line.


Some have described my work as belonging to the naïve style; true in the sense that I try to simplify scenes and things in an unconventional, unsophisticated manner; inspired by medieval painters and sculptors as well as primitive art.


Over the past fifteen years I have lived in different areas of Provence for, after Port Grimaud, then the Luberon our longing for the sea prevailed and
now I live in the Camp de la Suyere, a quiet hamlet deep in the Massif des Maures mountain range near La Garde Freinet overlooking the Gulf of Saint Tropez.
 

Although I have the most often shunned the public eye, preferring to work on commissions and through a network of collectors who over years and continents have absorbed most of my work, I have engaged in successful exhibitions in Holland, Japan and Nigeria.  The "insouciance" of youth left little visual memory of these events, some of the scanned work from Africa is on my website.

Before coming back to this region of Provence (see my works on Port Grimaud) I had a “living gallery” with my husband,
a “Hotel de Charme”   in the Luberon region of Provence.

The flow and appreciation of the Auberge' guests and the insatiable appetite of some for my work has reconciled my timidity from the public eye.  Visit the inn’s website I designed in illustrative form and the artwork in and about the rooms   it’s another dimension to my portfolio http://www.auberge-presbytere.com.

Beyond the private collections for the most part in Europe world to include Imperial College in London,

and a few in California and Florida, I have works in many corners of the world such as


the University of Louvain in Belgium' school of urban development

                                                                       or Shell headquarters in Lagos Nigeria and again Shell Center London.


                                                           Come in and visit, see my current work in the Gallery




I paint from a passion to get to know who and where I am.
I once had a dream, I was on stage giving a brilliant performance.
At the end, I noticed that the curtain had been closed during the session.
I want to open that curtain and share.