About the artist

My art gets you...

Abstract paintings with structure

The reaction I get from people who see my abstract paintings in person or through a computer screen is: Wow, I feel the energy. This work really touches me. They want to go to it and preferably touch it with their fingertips.

People who have an abstract painting with structure in their home feel that the room is filled with energy. Every day, they reconnect with their painting, which for them really feels like coming home.

What I always witness is that people start shining.

That is what I do what I do.

MY INSPIRATION

Meet the artist

My work is my interpretation of the inspiration I find in my daily life. What I see in the authentic nature around me or the beautiful personalities and stories of the people I meet.

All my experiences and emotions come to life in the paintings I create.

Layer by layer

Abstract painting

with structure

All paintings are fully sculptured and painted by hand. The first layer is a self-made structure texture that is sculpted on the canvas.

Once this layer has dried completely, the second layer gives the colour dimension through multiple layers of acrylic paint.

All paintings are framed with a black wooden frame, in which they seem to be floating.

"You create the world around you, as you fill it yourself."

Carel Frauenfelder

(1944 - 2010)

I love this quote. It perfectly reflects what I want to achieve with my art. I want to reach people, I want people to feel the energy of my art. I let my paintings tell my story and at the same time remind the viewer of parts of their own story that are ready to be strengthened, discovered or even to be healed.

My art is described as energy and touches the viewer deep inside. Every time one looks at my work, they discover something different.

Vi Arnolli

Creative journey through the years

Nothing happens overnight. It takes a lifetime of experiences to make dreams come true.

Starting to shape

My passion for creation started early in my childhood. With charcoal I sketched the nature of the area where I grew up. Scarce moments in which I could escape and be completely myself.

After secondary school, I went to the Grafisch Lyceum to learn the skills to make a magazine. A wonderful time in which I learned a craft that I have been able to fall back on several times.

After a short career in the prepress department of a small printing company, I had an unfortunate accident and bruised two discs in the upper part of my spine. Although I could no longer continue in the work I was doing at the time, new opportunities arose. Three years later, my exploration of my own creative 'being' took a surprising turn.

Living creative life for a while

I fell under the spell of making small art objects, jewellery and lighter holders. Made by joining together scrap metal with malleable epoxy resin. After a number of successful festivals, the production was not profitable enough to live on.

This creative ambition was no longer compatible with the flight into a demanding and traveling job in Telecommunications and Internet business. But wherever I went, my hand luggage always contained a sketchbook and a box of pastels.

Through setting up efficiency projects, giving training in document management, designing workflow processes and implementing hosting services programs, I ended up in the crisis of the Internet bubble and the bankruptcy of KPNQwest. In 2002, I finally returned to my old profession as traffic manager at the corporate communications department of 3M Netherlands.

Lessons in reality

In 2004 a colleague inspired me to start painting with oil colours. I took lessons from Carel Frauenfelder and started to paint realistic landscapes. Great material to work with. I discovered that I really needed to clear my head in order to surrender to the canvas and the brush. While the pressure of work and the care for my aunt increased, I found myself struggling with realism.

Unfortunately, in mid-2006 I suffered a severe burn-out and an outplacement trajectory. To keep myself active, I bought a book about HTML and started building websites from scratch. In the end, I started as an independent entrepreneur in 2007. I focused on the visual identity of new and innovative entrepreneurs.

Setting up my own business took up so much of my energy that all my canvases and painting materials, well packed, disappeared into the basement.

My true passion revealed

The unexpected news that Carel had passed away in 2010 hit me like a bomb. It was the trigger to liberate my paintings from my basement late at night. When the protective plastic was removed, my home once again filled with the enduring energy of creation and hidden passion.

In 2016, after a big project, there was really time and space to focus entirely on my creativity for a period of 6 months. My flat was transformed into a beautiful studio in no time by my fabulous friend. I went crazy in discovering my own creative twist.

It became abstract, something I never really appreciated until I started creating it myself. I worked with a combination of sculpting a surface on canvas and working with a multitude of colorful layers of acrylic paint.

Professionalization

It is one thing to create paintings and quite another to keep on creating them. I felt in every fibre that this was what I wanted to continue with. The big question was: How can I make money as an artist? Not long after that I saw the ad: Artists Earn Better. That's it!

After following the Master ART-repreneur Programme of Peter Maasdam, I not only started developing myself as an artist. I also developed my entrepreneurial skills to continue being an artist.

These entrepreneurial skills also added value to my business of Business Building, Visual Branding and Intuitive Webdesign. Even one of my long lost dreams came back to life.