Yvonne Vander Kooi: The Translation of Memory
Yvonne Vander Kooi is an artist and educator with extensive experience in arts and culture programming, community development, and social work, particularly in Nanaimo and the surrounding region. Her work uses the arts as a tool for life-long learning, often leading community-based projects. Recently, her studio practice has focused on semi-abstract figurative works that explore memory, family history, and themes of immigration and war, often drawing inspiration from old black-and-white photos. Her large-scale, narrative pieces balance figurative and abstract elements, using a vibrant, sensual palette of turquoise, fluorescent pinks, pastels, and yellows to create visually complex, evocative imagery.
How did your creative journey begin?
I’ve been a creative person for as long as I can remember - as a child I’ve always been making, drawing and painting. It’s been a constant theme throughout my life. When I was in university I switched from my science major to fine arts - that was a big decision and an important one in terms of defining myself as an artist.
Where do you find inspiration for your work?
My current work explores family history from pre-war colonial Indonesia, World War ll, and emigration to Canada. Drawing on these personal memories as well as imagery sourced from old black and white photos, my work expands on suggested narratives. This work considers the balance of figurative and abstract elements, along with formal material explorations. I am interested in the past and bringing it into the present - there is this lens or space between me and the past and I consider how I might want to bring that forward in an imaginative way. I think our stories and our histories define us and so these are the things that I’m interested in exploring and finding out more about. Ultimately, it is a kind of self portrait - a way to understand myself, my place in the world and my relationships in it. I’ve always been drawn to figurative work, but have also painted still lifes, botanicals, and landscapes. I play around in a lot of spaces but I find I’m always returning to the figure and am currently creating larger narrative works with the figure using old family film stills. There’s something about the photo that draws me in, that I’m curious and have questions about. My process involves translating images between mediums which creates gaps or spaces in representation, mirroring the gaps in recorded and cognitive memory, that present opportunities for creative interventions and reimaginings. These are the places and spaces that inspire me, these are the places that move me to play with paint on a surface.
How has your work evolved over the last few years?
I would say that in the last few years my work has dug a little deeper. I’m interested in not just representing those events from the past but in the imaginative play that can happen through translation. What are the formal changes or approaches I can make so my painting aligns itself more tightly or more poetically to what it is I'm trying to say. Also, aside from the more formal or conceptual considerations that are there, I guess I would say that I’m always trying to build my skills or knowledge of the material and trying to find new ways to play with paint on the surface. How can I work with the paint in a way that is more interesting and innovative? More recently I returned to oil painting - it's been about 25 years or more - I find it so exciting because oil paint is slower and it aligns itself more with what I'm trying to do in my work which is about slowing down time. I’m pausing and meditating on these photos and image stills so I can return to the canvas again and again and continue to move the paint around - it’s not dry in 20 minutes. It invites a more thoughtful approach, and then of course there are the aesthetic qualities of oil paint - it’s beautiful, rich, translucent; there is so much depth when you’re layering and glazing, there’s so much to learn, it's endless really.
What does a typical day in the studio look like for you, and how has your art practice grown or changed?
A typical day in the studio has been a lot of thinking, looking, critiquing, slowing down. I guess that's how my art practice has changed - I feel less compelled to paint paint paint all the time and more inclined to take my time with the work, to think more carefully about it, and be thoughtful about my next move. Usually a full day begins with a coffee in the studio and figuring out my game plan. I have tried out different routines in the studio like doing warm up drawings or paintings but I find that it just kind of gets in the way and I really need to just jump right in. I guess in some ways I’ve also been a little more flexible or generous with myself - so if I’m working on something and it’s not working I turn it around and I start another piece. I might have 3 or 4 paintings going on in the studio at the same time which I think is fine - it's pretty much a necessary tactic when working with oils because of the drying time and it gives you a break from something, a needed rest. It’s always good to turn a painting around and then bring it back out again. Sometimes I don't return to painting for months or even a few years.
Which experiences have impacted your work as an artist?
That’s a big question - it's hard to pinpoint it to just a few. I think our entire experience of living in this world has an impact on our work but I suppose some things more than others. I think experiences with other artists, experiences looking at other painters, talking to other artists about their process - these are important experiences for me as an artist. I want to be challenged, I want to connect with artists who are doing things that I’m not doing, who have more experience and can teach me something about painting and influence it in a way that would be really helpful and exciting. More personal experiences are harder to nail down but family, relationships, having children, my relationship to nature, plants and people. These are experiences that impact my work.
How has social media impacted your work?
I've been around for a lot longer than social media has and it is interesting to see what happens or what has happened with the internet or social media in general. I guess I would say that it's a curse and a blessing. I think it's a curse because you're easily drawn into all sorts of rabbit holes that don't really get you anywhere. It can also be a place where you're constantly comparing yourself to others and it always looks like other artists and creatives are doing amazing work. I think that’s true some of the time but when you don’t see something in person in the real world, it's really hard to get a gauge on what people are doing and how well they're doing it - you miss out on the subtleties and nuance in the work. On the other hand, social media has introduced me to a lot of artists that I follow, that I admire, that I think will influence me and when I do find out about them I do a deeper dive - I look for artist interviews, their websites or shows that they might have had. So that's a positive but I think the negative is very real and you have to limit your time there or you will waste a lot of your time.
Can you share more about the themes you explore in your work?
This is something that I’m thinking about and writing about often, especially lately as I apply and send in submissions to various galleries and write grants. Many of the themes, as I’ve mentioned, explore immigration, family history, war and the immigrant experience particularly post WW2 in Canada, growing up in the suburbs - and not in a way that is entirely mimetic but more importantly explores the past through archived family photos and takes a more curious stance leaving room for imaginative play. When I look at photos or film stills from the past I ask a lot of questions and I want that to be present in the work through abstraction and imagination. There’s a sense of the past, how memories persist, but how they can also be quite inaccurate. I’m interested in memory or the persistence of memory, how it changes over time and how it’s not necessarily truthful or accurate - memory is close to the imagination. I think my work speaks to these gaps in memory and my job is to have fun creatively filling in those spaces. So my job as an artist is to play around with that, those gaps in memory, slippage and create new stories or new ways of understanding some of the imagery I’m looking at and the stories that they might suggest. By abstracting these personal images, the work invites viewers to contribute their own reflections and builds connections between diverse individuals who share similar tales and memories of family and immigration.
Website: https://www.yvonnevanderkooi.com/