Description

Blonde Bombshell By Michiel Folkers

Michiel Folkers was born in the Netherlands and started his artistic journey experimenting with graffiti art in the nineties. It naturally evolved into street art with the use of stencils and matured on canvas, as he refined his artistic style. Heavily influenced by festival posters pasted on the walls of Holland’s streets, Michiel became fascinated by the aesthetics of these “promotional posters” and the idea of layering graffiti upon them. Describing them as ‘collage walls’, he is still using these kinds of street elements in his art today. The work is often made up of posters that Michiel has collected from the streets of Amsterdam, referring to the “sustainable art” which gives an “edgy and living character to the painting.”

A common theme in Michiel’s work is 20^th century icons. He started exploring this genre whilst experimenting with alternative techniques, such as collage and spray paint which he felt made his work more innovative and avant-garde. Screen-printing is also a commonly used technique in his work, “actually I use every technique to make my canvas look like a city wall”, he says. Michiel endeavours to make a whole new image with lots of different elements. “I am always trying to force the viewer to see one image instead of seeing all the loose parts”.  His artwork has become increasingly more abstract in the last five years, but amidst the “chaos” of his compositions he always tries to find order in palette and placement, “the chaos has to be friendly and quiet”. For Michiel, the exciting part of his technique is the restricted use of colour, “I am forced to use colour combinations the streets will give me.”