Ellen Nauwynck - Modern Artist
I make mindmaps. Places to wander around in. My art is infused with a mix of quantum physics, nature, the universe - just life itself".
Ellen Nauwynck is a graphic and visual artist. Eight years ago the dam broke in her head and she was overwhelmed with painful memories that she had carefully shielded until then.
Ellen testifies openly about the psychoses she has endured. Still, it would be too easy to understand her art as successful efforts to combat chaos.
For much more than sublimated fear or detachment, her work shows a special artistic sensitivity and a strong belief in the possibility of making herself and the world better.
Ellen's oeuvre is distinguished within non-mainstream art by its extraordinary choice of subjects. She does not depict - as you would expect from art that arises in the eye of a psychosis - a world without a bottom. On the contrary, it departs from the one thing that, in the midst of a receding reality, it can be absolutely certain of, namely the existence of its own thoughts and feelings.
She accepts them indiscriminately and arranges them as colors: from light to dark, with low to high saturation. She shows the same care in the choice of her visual means: screws, nails, pearls, wires, points and emoticons,… Together they depict a structured universe with their own mind as a mirror line.
Because, however playful, intuitive and light some of her works may look, they are always based on a distinct vision of reality: as the universe is ordered, so it is reflected in our mind - with an ever-expanding awareness that the mood of our environment colors. Ellen herself wants to exert a positive influence by making mental illness a topic for discussion and by pointing out the resilience of people with a psychological vulnerability. (Kathleen De Muer)