MY WASTELAND by db Waterman

A girl has fun on a swing, against the backdrop of the demolition of old factory buildings. An industrial city where old dilapidated buildings are demolished to make way for modern industry, the Philips buildings in Eindhoven, Netherlands. My hometown.

My Wasteland is one of the many 'swing' artworks I have created.

It depicts the freedom you feel as a child. At the same time, it shows how confined children live today. Inside, behind hu
n laptops and smartphones.

I created the original artwork using collage, acrylic paint, spray paint and oil pastel chalk

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 !

Learn more about db Waterman?

• All artworks by db Waterman
• Read all about this artist