gitta pardoel
Gitta Pardoel, born in the Netherlands (1964), studied a combination of architecture, urban design, landscape architecture and interior design at Delft University of Technology. After graduating, she worked as a designer in various areas, from airport to family house, from park to garden. During her work as a designer, she studied art at the art academy in Utrecht and achieved her second master in Art, Architecture and Design at the University of Leicester, United Kingdom. In her work, she focused on the experience of spaces she could explore more freely in autonomous work that she developed in addition to her designer practice.
As an artist/ architect, she was fascinated in ways to unravel the layered perception of space. In her semi abstract paintings, drawings, installations, films and prints, she has the associations between what she sees, hears and feels, to come to an elementary image: not quickly and carelessly imagined, but carefully built up in various layers that tell a story together. Which gives her work a poetic character.
In the last few years the scale of her work and also the focus has become smaller, more concentrated, more intimate. As an artist/ illustrator, nature has become an important theme. In many of her works we see references to leaves, plants and animals in a semi abstract way but also realistic and detailed. As if you zoom out and zoom in at the same time. Looking with your eyes but also with your mind and memories. Working with different materials creates a layering in the work, which also gives the work a poetic character.
Her interest in nature and stories has also resulted in a number of children's books and layered illustrations.
Her work is included in a number of collections (Movares, ABP, El Ashmak, Meca as well as a multitude of private collections). She had numerous exhibitions in the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Italy, Qatar, Morocco, Sweden, China, Tunisia, Argentina, etc. Almost a decade she has been teaching art and design at various art academies.
Gitta Pardoel;
“I love flora and landscapes, birds and trees. I love the singing of the blackbird in the evening, the smell of honeysuckle and the taste of wild strawberries.
With my eyes and my mind I follow the forms, the lines, the contrasts. I follow the abstraction and the details. With my eyes and mind I follow what I see with my pencil and brush, my camera and ideas.”