CHECK OUT MY MATE by db Waterman

Urban graffiti scene of a girl playing with her skipping rope in the late evening sun. On the concrete tiles that resemble a chessboard. In the background, you can see her dark gloomy city

The skipping rope is a tool in the sport of skipping rope where one or more participants jump over a rope that is swung so that it goes under their feet and over their heads.

Children inspire me. Their ability to transcend any rotten situation is amazing. Playing tag in the ruins of a bombed-out Syrian city. Playing football in the most miserable neighbourhoods. They are always looking for the light. They save the future that our generations really messed up and don't even blame us for it. If only we could preserve the child in ourselves a bit more, we wouldn't be in such a mess. Art can help us find our childlike innocence again

I have always been fascinated by advertising posters, weathered billboards and old walls with peeling paint.

The challenge was to replicate these old walls with weathered and torn advertising posters. Such walls are often found in city centres and near old buildings.

For many people a sign of neglect and decay, but for me a source of inspiration.

Walls with weathered bricks and peeling paint also have a huge appeal to me

Combining these two elements, the old posters and the weathered walls, into an artwork creates a unique and new whole, which often forms the basis for my Mixed Media paintings. Carefully constructed with many different layers. Exactly like the old weathered walls created by time.

This artwork is offered by db Waterman

I remembered that as a young girl I so much liked to cut images from magazines to paste them into school agendas, scrapbooks and even on my bedroom door. Add to this the fascination I always had for walls filled with old posters, flaking paint, scrappy billboards and weathered paint, it opened an unexpected door for completely new opportunities. Completely unintended I found a new way of working, I felt pleasurably and comfortably at home in. What started out as copying old walls with worn out posters has grown into many series of new visual storytelling. Not simply just eclecticism, but bringing together many seemingly incoherent story lines into one completely new story, my own personal story. Initially it lacked the one thing that is important to me, the transparency that normally only is possible with the use of watercolor. The unforgiving layering of transparent watercolors is a challenge I would not want to miss and after a lot of trial and error I finally succeeded in getting the collages as transparent as a watercolor. Every layer of paper, oil, acrylic, pencil, crayon, ballpoint, watercolor, ink, charcoal and whatever else I use, remains visible in the artwork. You can imagine it made me feel the queen of the ball !

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