About the work
The collages explore what happens when the rules of the natural world are quietly suspended.
The large nature and animal compositions are immersive and layered. Real animals, plants and organisms, all in their true colours, are placed in worlds where the logic of above and below, land and ocean, large and small no longer holds. The fantasy emerges from the combinations themselves. They carry hints of Wimmelbilder, pop art and surrealism.
The geometric strand distils a single species into one mathematical form: spiral, triangle, circle. The cosmological strand places planets and sacred geometry against deep dark backgrounds.
What connects them is the same premise: the boundaries shift between what is and what could be. The natural world, looked at with enough attention, turns out to be endlessly intriguing and beautiful.
Nature is already surreal. I just make it visible.
About the artist
For over twenty years, Hester Brink worked as a scientific researcher and criminal profiler for the Dutch police, studying serious crime and serial offenders. Fascinating work on the dark side of society.
In 2020, Long Covid stopped that world. A full, fast-moving life became empty. In quantum physics, a vacuum is the most creative state there is. The emptiness turned out to be fertile ground: space for reflection and unexpected associations, for the kind of thinking that a busy life crowds out.
In search of lightness, beauty and wonder, she returned to her first love. Hester had drawn, painted and exhibited her work since her early years, long before a career in law enforcement took over. What began as bringing the images in her head to life has since become her practice.
Her world grew smaller. Somehow, she started seeing more.
The associations and connections she once made in criminal investigations she now makes between species, ecosystems and worlds. The result is a fantasy of reality: hidden beauty that was always there, waiting to be seen.
She now exhibits across the Netherlands.
About collage
Collage has a long history as an art form, from the Dadaists to contemporary digital practice. What has always driven it is the same impulse: taking existing images and combining them into something that could not exist otherwise.
Hester works on an iPad, building each piece layer by layer. Every image is collected or photographed: real animals, plants and organisms in their true colours, brought together until something new emerges.