Gre

Gre is an ode to my Mom, who passed away in September 2024
with special thanks to the OLVG-west hospital in Amsterdam for adding this piece to there art collection.

In April 2024, I was in Indonesia with my parents. On the driveway lay the canvas that would later become the painting now hanging behind us. At the time, I had no idea how deeply layered it would become—layers that only revealed themselves 15 months later, on July 23, 2025.I painted partly outside, partly in my bedroom-turned-studio. My mother, then on holiday in the Netherlands, kept a close eye on what we were up to from afar. I experimented with pigments, indigo, and new mediums, unaware that these moments—light and ordinary—would soon feel so precious. When I flew back home at the end of April, I rolled up the canvas inside my yoga mat, a gift from my mother six years earlier at my exhibition in Bali.Five weeks later, my mother suffered a sudden brain hemorrhage. She survived, but her life and ours changed forever. In those first weeks—when she seemed to float between worlds—I painted this canvas in my Amsterdam studio. It was the one thing I could control. With each stroke, more precise than I had ever painted before, I poured my longing, fear, and hope into the work. I told her, “Everything will be okay,” not knowing what that meant, but needing to believe it.By August, the painting had a name: Gre, after the name the nurses used for my mother in the hospital. It felt comforting, as if they knew her. While she often didn’t remember I was painting, she kept a magazine by her bed featuring my solo exhibition. Sometimes, she proudly showed it to others.Three months after her first hemorrhage, we spent a day together in the garden of her rehabilitation center. I wrote in my diary that evening about the gifts her memory loss had unexpectedly brought: living in the moment, patience, and the pure strength of love. It was the last time I saw her. Eight days later, she suffered a second brain hemorrhage, and this time, she did not survive.No one wants this to be the story, but my father—wise as ever—told me: If this is the story, then the most beautiful thing we can do is make the most of what happens today. This painting has become exactly that: a symbol of unconditional love, of living in the now, of the healing power of art. It is my ode to my mother.Thanks to the support of friends, the art committee of OLVG, and my family, Gre now hangs in a central public space, where I hope it offers comfort, connection, and hope to all who pass by.