Where did it start
To be honest, it has always been there — the love for nature, the fascination with the hidden beauty in the familiar, the ordinary.
As a young girl, I was endlessly captivated by the smallest details, often wandering through the fields and discovering entire worlds, at the age of 7 I was even convinced I had discovered a new species.
I come from a long tradition of plant growers. In fact, there is even a bridge named after my family in the world-famous horticultural village of Boskoop. Studying to become a garden designer felt like a natural step. And yet, something in me longed for a more conceptual approach and drew me toward art school instead.
Throughout my studies, nature kept returning in my work. Looking back now, I see it was the beginning of a search
The real turning point came in1992. I had taken a year off from art school and was travelling through remote Australia. Somewhere in the vast desert, our vehicle broke down. We were three hundred miles past the last gas station when local Aboriginal people helped us. After the repair, sitting at a fire, one of the women asked me: “What do you listen to at home?” and she wasn’t talking about music. She said, “During the day I listen to the crickets, and at night I listen to the frogs.”
That question has never left me.
The Scala Naturae (Charles Bonnet 1781) Die ketten der wesen.
Although painted in the 18th century, it illustrates a rigid natural hierarchy that has continuisly shaped human thought since Aristotle, over 2.000 years ago.
Back at art school, it began to shape my perspective profoundly. It sparked a search into the cultural background of how we perceive nature. For that Aboriginal woman, the crickets and frogs were not a backdrop — they were part of her daily existence. In Western culture, nature is often perceived as scenery.
Coming from the Netherlands — a rational, Western Christian society — I began tracing the roots of our thinking. Much of it goes back to Greek philosophy. Around 300 years before Christ, Aristotle introduced the idea of classification: the Scala Naturae.
In this “ladder of nature,” everything had its place. At the bottom: earth, rocks, minerals. Then lower plants, higher plants, lower animals, higher animals. And at the very top: the human being. Later interpretations added the idea that the lower exists to serve the higher. Minerals serve plants. Plants serve animals. Everything serves humans.
Christianity adopted this hierarchy, adding that only humans possess a spirit. Although we are called to practise stewardship — to take care of the earth — the structure remains hierarchical. Humans are placed in control.
We are so conditioned by this thinking that it is difficult to see a wasp as a fellow living being instead of a nuisance. And a plant appearing in the “wrong” place becomes a weed.
But what if it isn’t?
Crush on Nature highlights these plants to show their resilience and beauty. I invite you to enlarge your view and start discovering what you usually overlook.
The world is not a ladder; we are all connected. Look around. It all begins by noticing.
Returning from my travels with this mind-bending question, back at art-school I desgined a bright red, non-natural object. Through a single peephole, it isolates a few leaves, inviting viewers to feel the wonder of an ordinary piece of nature.
Though misunderstood at the time, back in 1992 – even by myseld – this project evolved into the core concept of my work today.
