About

“You have to be careful in this rapidly changing world. Before you know it, it will pass you by. Drawing is a run to capture impressions. For the time being, this offers something to hold on to, against suffocation. It’s breathing and thinking.
I greedily perceive life and depict it in paintings and sculptures.”

‘The desire for freedom’ is a recurring theme on which my series of ’temple images’ is based. Animals stay in a secure environment, the temple, and move through the water (the subconscious) above the temple towards their freedom. These images arise in response to my job in which I work with people with dementia.
One of my tasks in this work is to create a situation in which ‘human beings’, despite dementia, are seen and feel free to be themselves. Man is not locked in his body, not limited by his environment and he feels good.”

Ilona graduated at the Royal Academy of art in The Hague as Monumental Designer. She teaches fine arts besides her job as a Wellbeing Supervisor in a nursing home. In the latter, a couple of questions make her wonder. For example: who is this dependent person that has to live in a nursing home for the rest of their life? How does our society treat these people? It is in these kind of questions that Ilona finds contradictions, which she looks at as challenges to portray in her work.