Muriel Leusink, born in Amsterdam, raised in West Africa, trained as an industrial design engineer. After 20 joyful years of creating ideas and products for beautiful brands, I am now fully dedicated to making art.
I would describe my studio as a drawing factory. My work is a marriage of craftsmanship, graphics and urban art.
The basis of my autonomous work is my lifelong passion for drawing. I draw with anything (ink, paint, spraycans, markers, …. ) on anything (paper, canvas, textile, furniture, objects, walls…). Occasionally digitally, but mostly oldskool by hand.
Wild profusion of little characters
Muriel draws. But as the mesmerising time-lapse videos of the process show it may be just as well the drawing doing the drawing. Is there a plan, or does she just start? You could think she is doodling, though with a very controlled and clear-cut result. It appears to be just as much an intuitive process as it is a matter of laying out a design that was thought-out in advance.
The characters closely follow each other, filling the spaces the others generate, making each other both figure and ground. What results is a plane full of stylized, cartoon-like figures, all following similar lines, similar logics, but these are cartoons without recurring characters. Each little guy, or girl, a fresh type.
Some appear to be full blown personalities, with facial expressions. Little friendly monsters. Others are just shapes, animals, or plants perhaps, hard to define organisms linked together in an intricate ecology. What is going on? What is the story? We are drawn into a world that is as reassuring as it is hard to fathom. No beginning no end. Intensely d know them. Let’s proliferate together. I think we can all easily blend in. Clemens Driessen – Assistant Professor WUR Cultural Geography, Philosophy of Science and Technology, and Ethics
