Ancient Egypt Inspired Artworks

Inspiration

House of Million Years

At art school, we learned to discover and explore our own sources of inspiration. Because I am interested in archaeology and ancient art, I began to draw the excavated building foundations. In the foundations you can distinguish the different rooms in which you can put all kinds of imaginary stories. I made two paintings of the “house of millions of years” of Queen Hatsheput. A temple to continue to serve the cult of the deceased queen.

Maps and the Flower of Life

Zeshoek 01
Flower of Life

During the time I was working on this, I received a gift of a pendant of “the flower of life.” This figure has been found in several places around the world in ancient civilizations. This gave me a feeling that it must be an important figure and I began to draw and paint it, to discover something of the secret this figure seems to hold.

Look on the page for more artworks.

Preserved Information Packages of the Past

Dino-bird 1, oil on canvas
Fossil of Archaeopteryx at the Teylers Museum

The Teylers Museum

Walking through Teylers Museum in Haarlem, I loved to look at all the beautiful collections of fossils and crystals. The museum is the oldest in the Netherlands. Not only the fossils but the whole museum is a preserved information package of the past. The whole environment makes it a wonderful experience.

Cap Griz Nez

The fossils reminded me of vacationing in France, along the Northwest coast. We were staying at a campsite at “Cap Griz Nez” which literally means the cape of the gray nose. The gray pebble beaches and the nose shape of the cape have given it it’s name. The nose sticks out towards the UK and the tip of the nose is the closest point to the UK.

Layers of Algae and other creatures

Hout 15
Wood – Oil on Canvas- 70 cm x 50 cm

The white chalk cliffs mirror the cliffs of Dover on the opposite side of the English Channel. The cliffs are formed from layers and layers of algae and other creatures throughout millions of years. The cliffs also have beautiful nature with rare flora and fauna and really worth while a visit.

One day we walked from the gray beach to the white beach, the Cap Blanc Nez. Entering the white beach we saw a group of six or seven people who were gathered around something on the wet sand near the waterline. We could see they were very exited, and when we got closer we saw that they had found a big fossil. My interest in fossils began at that moment, and I was inspired to paint some of them.

Dino-bird 2 – Oil on Canvas
Rhamphorhynchus

More Works About Fossils

These paintings are also kind of like fossils; they are of my early work from around 2008.

You can see more work on this topic on the fossil page. Some of the works are for sale in my Etsy shop.

God the Geometer

God the Geometer

In my art I use a lot of geometric shapes and patterns. Mathematics is a great inspiration for me. It fascinates me that the universe is mathematical and that all matter can be described as numbers, the relationship between numbers and the patterns they form together. Numbers not only represent quantities, but they also describe shapes such as a point or circle, lines, triangles, squares and so on. When these shapes connect with each other, all kinds of patterns appear that can vary endlessly.

In this medieval painting God is represented als the supreme geometer.

The numbers from one to ten can be considered the alphabet by which the universe is written. The numbers are the foundation for designs found throughout the universe, beginning with the smallest particles to the largest galactic clusters. Crystals, plants, fruits and vegetables, weather patterns and the bodies of humans and animals are made up of small patterns that are part of a larger design. There are patterns formed as spirals, these can be found in hurricanes, atoms, pine cones, shells, galaxies and whirlwinds.

Paardenrondgang
Knights Tour

Other examples include concentric circles in water, circles that stars write around the pole star over time, and dorodango; a Japanese technique of making a perfect round ball out of mud with your hands. This are examples of the number one. The petals of the Crown of Thorns, mitosis, maple seed and symmetry are examples of number two. Number three can be found in fruits and vegetables such as cucumber and melon. Dehydrated earth breaks apart into squares, salt crystals are shaped like cubes and the flower of the Lunaria for example, has four petals.

Fibonacci

Number five is a special number and represents growth and the golden section. The golden ratio can be found in the five-pointed star and it can be used as a tool to find the golden ratio in nature. In the human body, you can find the golden ratio in the division of the forearm with the hand, subdivisions in the face, the finger bones, and so on. The distances between the planets are also divided into the golden section. The golden section also has a relationship to Fibonacci’s spiral in the aforementioned spirals in shells, galaxies and pine cones.

Zeshoek 50
Hexagons

Number six can be seen perfectly in the honeycomb and in the amazing and unique shapes of snowflakes. You can count seven colors in a rainbow and the octave is divided into seven notes. A spider has eight legs, bloodroot has eight petals and there are sponges in the shape of an octagon. There are few nine-fold shapes found in nature; nine is the principle of completion. It takes nine months of development before we are born into this world. We have ten fingers and ten toes, a squid has ten legs and a passion flower has ten petals.

These examples about how nature expresses itself in this genius and poetic way inspires me. By drawing and painting these shapes of numbers, I try to gain a better understanding of the universe and why I am in it.