Marina Broere

Studio #403    www.marinabroere.com

    I was born in Rotterdam, The Netherlands (Holland) the worlds largest harbor city. As a result of the May 1940 bombings by the Germans, Rotterdam was in the years that I grew up, by far the most modern city of Holland. The urge to rebuild a new city center combined with the high traffic of international sea and river traffic made for a very dynamic atmosphere where always something was being constructed. Besides the actual brick and mortar rebuilding, the cultural life needed to be rebuild too and that resulted in a lot of daring initiatives like the start of what is now one of the most important international film festivals, great exhibition halls (designed by Rem Koolhaas), exciting galleries and a wonderful concert hall.

    After divorcing my first husband I quit teaching and found myself a part time job for financial support (in the flower bulb export) and concentrated on my painting.  Meeting my second husband is what led me to Milwaukee in 2000 (he was the general manager of the American division of the company that I worked for) Milwaukee has a lot in common with Rotterdam (except maybe the dry wit that Rotterdammers are known for), although Milwaukee maybe is at the beginning of the development that Rotterdam went through. The Fifth Ward, where I have my studio is very similar to the area where I went to high school, close to the river harbors and all the grain and coffee and tea warehouses. It has that same ‘hard labor’ feel as Rotterdam has and I feel never more at home as breathing in the smell of the river while I walk the River Board Walk, even though it’s on the other side of the earth as where I come from…..

     My start as a painter was as a painter of still lives. I have always been intrigued by the still life, as a portrait of an era. I loved the  still lives with fruits, breads etc. from the 1700’s and later. I also loved the persevering commitment with what Giorgio Morandi painted his many variations of still lives. I had some very interesting teachers in art school that were innovative still life painters like Klaas Gubbels, who translates the shapes of tables and coffee pots into flat graphic signals. My mentor Henk de Vos who painted large informal and colorful still lives, Guus de Ruijter, a painter of airy, soft and dreamy still lives (and a great décor designer and painter of murals) In my still life paintings I have always tried to find the unexpected angle, to make it a 21^st century still life, to have viewers do a double take….. There is more to this as meets the eye! In the mid eighties the landscape entered my work in oil color, I had always been doing water color landscapes while traveling, but never translated them into oil paintings. People who have been following my work for a long time call my landscapes ‘natural still lives’ Somewhere during the early 90’s I started painting people, not as a portrait but as a canvas for a series of emotions, ending with a series of tango dancers. More and more I became attracted to a more abstract way of painting, first just in water colors, slowly moving to oil colors. Nowadays you’ll find all of these elements in my work.