INTERVIEW
We meet artist Johanna van den Berg (1953) in her stylish studio in Gorinchem, the Netherlands. Everything there exudes the tranquility she needs to dive into her own world.
Johanna van den Berg
“I have always been a creative person; fantasy was always paramount. For example, when I was thirteen, I invented my own language, I wrote stories and I liked to draw.”
“However, I was taught at home that ‘real art’ can only be realistic. When I timidly showed my first drawings as a child, people thought it was nice, but still very different from the real artists. That is why I never took my own work seriously. And in 1970 – at the age of seventeen – I stopped drawing altogether.”
“Many years later – it was now the spring of 2020 and lockdown time – I suddenly felt the need to start drawing again. I started with geometric shapes, I was already familiar with them because my father was an architect, but I soon looked for more emotions and freedom. Others, such as my family members, stimulated me and suddenly a stream of drawings started. I was shocked myself! An enormous production followed, because ‘I had to catch up on fifty years’.”
Joke van den Berg at seventeen
“My style became increasingly free. After the ‘Lines and Shapes’, I started with portraits: the MirrorZ series. So called because everyone can see something different of themselves in it. I loved being the ruler in my own world! Then I completely let go (laughs); an eye hung outside the head, a mouth on the shoulder, nothing was crazy enough. Gradually I developed my own style. With a lot of attention for the eyes, always corners with perspective, often a window and birds… was it still my desire for freedom?”
“And strangely enough: although I am extremely optimistic by nature, there is often a certain sadness in my drawings. Perhaps an expression of things that I experience and process in my art.”
“Drawing is a very organic process for me. A sentence like ‘the empty paper stared at me’ is completely unknown to me. I just start, and then everything comes naturally. I don’t throw anything away. When I make a mistake, I make it into something completely different. I don’t have any sources of inspiration – it comes as it comes. The only inspiration is life itself.”
“How did I get so many followers on Instagram? In May 2020, I carefully posted my first drawing on the platform, and to my surprise it was an immediate hit. One of the drawings went viral and got 16,000 likes. So in a short time I had thousands of followers – many people from the art world, but I also have private communication with Hollywood stars and, for example, with an artist who previously worked with Pink Floyd. We meet each other on the same level, but their support encourages me.”
“My name is a different story. My Dutch first name ‘Joke’ (pronounced: Yo-keh) would of course cause confusion in English-speaking countries. That is why I chose to use my official name: Johanna van den Berg-Borggreve, Johanna VDBB.”
“Now I see that my style is sometimes copied. Within certain limits, I have no problem with that. As long as people mention me as the source of inspiration. I am also sometimes asked if my drawings can be colored. ‘Go ahead,’ I then say. Personally, I think it is just messy, with all that paint. But I never say ‘never’, because I don’t want to limit myself. Drawing is just fun, wonderfully relaxing. I do not let myself be limited, not even by my age. Everything is possible.”
