'I heard a fairy tale about the moon that has to deal with an undercurrent of big money, countries fighting to mine her. No way, I thought, the moon is for nights owls who still are mesmerized by the idea people actually walked on her outlandish surface.'

Carolien Wissing

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Carolien Wissing (Aalten, 1976) is a painter of vast or -on the contrary- intimate landscapes in a sober color palette. She depicts the area where human intervention ends and nature begins. Her artwork immerses the viewer in a world that can be divided into feelings of belonging, fear and awe. It celebrates our connection with nature, to help us remember where we are rooted. Carolien's work balances between the surreal and the earthly, looking for a way to find a new relationship between people and nature, between ecology and ethics. Purchases Carolien's work has been purchased by housing corporation Lieven de Key, GSUS Sindustries, the Amsterdam Museum, Benetton, NIOD and Rijkswaterstaat, among others, and is part of private collections in the EU and the US. Her work has been shown in Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle and the Amsterdam Museum. Projects Carolien regularly initiates her own projects, such as Art Raw (2012) when she filled a huge factory hall – the Kromhouthal in Amsterdam – with her work, Art Venture (2015) exhibition on a former deep-sea trawler during Art Rotterdam, The White Ball Spectacle in Amsterdam (2019) and Where the Wild Things Grow (2022 - ongoing) where art, food and storytelling come together at special locations in nature, close to the city. Background In 2000, Carolien graduated as an architectural designer (Art Academy Constantijn Huygens, Kampen, Netherlands). After her studies, she regularly traveled and worked abroad for extended periods of time. From North and South America, Africa and also Europe. She built a sailboat in Indonesia and sailed it for months, she built houses in France and the Spanish Pyrenees and trained horses in Iceland. She often lived on the border between nature and culture. Many of her painted landscapes come from one of these places, where the existence of culture fades and slowly merges into the rules of nature. Currently Since 2020, Carolien has returned part-time to her native soil in Aalten, where she is co-founder of an agroforestry project called Nieuwe Bodem. Here she is responsible, among other things, for the propagation of trees. About a year before the start of the project – still unaware that she would be co-owner of many trees a year later – Carolien started painting forests and trees. Nieuwe Bodem (New Soil) has set her off on a journey about the ground beneath her feet. She is trying to get a grip on it while working with it. This ongoing quest resulted in many artworks that can be found here online as well as in upcoming exhibitions and art experiences.