About

Else van Dierendonck is a multidisciplinary artist working in oil painting, sculptures, and poetry. In many ways, her work transcends singular expression. For Else, abstraction lends focus to colour and form without time, structure, or facile context. Her paintings become an inevitability of her own expression, a circumstance to conjure forth her inner feelings that seek clarity in chaos. For Else, art is a process that reaches for stillness through intuitive gestures, spontaneous markings, and unconscious symbols that emerge on the canvas. It embodies Cy Twombly or Willem de Koonings expressive gestures and abstraction that liberates from direct representation, which she calls her own “poetry of mind and soul.” Ultimately, her work seeks to make meaning of our contemporary moment and of maintaining hope.

Working predominantly on large-scale canvases since settling on Spain’s mediterraenean coast in 2022, she creates monumental works that eschew deliberate thought in favour of raw, emotional truth. Through these works of colours that embody the landscapes she observes and longs for, she creates spaces where emotional truth can exist unfiltered and free, offering proof of life, of feeling, and of persisting.

Education
1981–1986 – MFA, Minerva Academy, Groningen, Netherlands
1979–1981 – BA Art History, University of Groningen, Netherlands

Selected Solo Exhibition
1996 – Association des Paralysés de France, Bordeaux
1994 – Szisakitan, Cap Breton
1988 – Gallery Beuningen
1987 – Kunsthuis 13
1987 – Gallery Oceaan, Arnhem

Selected Group Exhibitions
2025 – Restless, Domio Gallery
2025 – Unusual, Domio Gallery
2022 – Kunstuitleen Amsterdam (Permanent Collection)
1995 – Chateau Graves, Bordeaux
1993 – Gallery des Beaux Arts, Bordeaux
1992 – Grand Hommes, Bordeaux
1991 – Gallery Le Temps Suspendu, Bordeaux
1989 – Park Dieren
1989 – Gallery Oceaan, Arnhem
1986 – Centraal Beheer, Apeldoorn
1986 – A-Kerk, Groningen