Saskia Dingemans and her mystical images

About Saskia

Saskia's passion for making art is profound. But along with this passion, she's also enjoying spending her retirement out in nature, travelling and getting together with friends. This inspires her and she also draws a lot of inspiration from other artists. "For example, from the work of Robert Doisneau. His art is really beautiful because his photos have emotion." In addition, the works of Paul den Hollander, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Vivian Maier, Veselin Atanasov and Henri Cartier-Bresson inspire her too.

A learning process that never stops

Saskia was born in Breda and married Hans. "I helped him build up his medical practice for ten years. Sadly, he passed away at a young age." Following this difficult period, she decided to set up a studio for ceramics and interior design on their farm. "During this time, I travelled a lot to Mali - The Dogon Valley, Yemen and Madagascar, primarily for their primitive architecture and nature. I had to put a stop to my activities due to serious health problems and operations," says Saskia. Following a trip to Cuba, Saskia realised that she wanted to buy a good camera and that photography could become an interesting hobby that she could practise anywhere and everywhere.

"It's a learning process that never stops and it fuels my creativity. Through my creative work in the past, I’ve learnt to observe and create good compositions." She started working for various galleries. "They encouraged me to be really critical of my work because less than one per cent of photos uploaded by photographers end up being published and acclaimed. Each photo is reviewed by curators and that keeps me on my toes. They now sell my pieces around the world!"

Capturing a mystical, sometimes dramatic, atmosphere

Saskia says: "My nature photos are usually impressionistic with a mystical, sometimes dramatic and dark touch, making use of light that makes you think of the Dutch Old Masters." Through the COVID pandemic, she learned to focus more and more on making still life photos and she'd always create a series. "There's a minimalist Zen series, an abstract flower series and series where I again keep using that light reminiscent of the Old Masters. In each series, you'll always detect my signature." Saskia doesn't take photos of what she sees, "but I always create an impression of what I see. My intuition and deepest emotions combined with technique lead me to the result I envision when I think of nature photographs." This means that she has to keep constantly observing her environment and that sometimes it takes a long time before she can photograph the right moment. "I also listen to weather reports. With still life photos, I first have to create a design and translate that into a photo. Light is really important here. I do any post-processing in Photoshop or Lightroom."

Saskia never lets other people see her work before it's finished and when in doubt, she sometimes posts a photo to Facebook to see how people react before she sends it to the gallery. For Saskia, a photo is only truly finished when it's both technically and emotionally perfect. "A photo is good for me when I want to look at it for longer or if it makes me curious."

Dramatic Iceland

When we asked Saskia about her favourite piece, she answered: "I don't actually have a favourite picture, but Stokksnes in Iceland is a special place for me because of its vastness, ruggedness, tranquillity, light, drama, magic and poetry. All these aspects come together for me in the photo 'Dramatic Iceland'.