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Lieke Marleen van Kalken

Lieke Marleen van Kalken, creates contemporary works that playfully explore the concept of perspective. Her art spans a variety of materials and techniques, including oil paint, drawing, collage, childhood sketches, digital and analog photography, and silkscreen printing. Throughout her work, she develops stages of abstraction that intentionally resist the notion of completeness.Her work is never meant to be finalized—it's always part of an ongoing process. She often revisits pieces, transforming or reusing them in different ways, allowing for continuous evolution and exploration. Optical illusions with water and glass play a key role in her work, exploring how our perception of reality can change based on how we look at it. This means that the way we view the world affects how we understand and interpret it.

Additionally, the artist encourages viewers to think about the delicate relationship between humanity and nature, and how our focus—or lack of focus—shapes our experience of the world around us. This highlights the idea that our perception of reality is fragile and influenced by both our environment and our attention.

Lieke reflects:

"Burdened but blessed with a neurodiverse brain, I see things differently from the masses. I now consider this difference a gift—a beautiful enrichment to both my life and art. I was often told that my perception of the world didn’t reflect reality, but as I’ve grown, I’ve realized that just because a majority shares a common perspective doesn’t mean it defines truth. My art is a celebration of the diversity of perception, and I seek to unravel the layers of how I experience the world and how this connects to others' realities."

Lieke’s art frequently asks, What is reality? For her, there is no fixed answer—it’s all about perspective. As a child, she was fascinated by the structures and movements of nature, a curiosity that still gives her a sense of inner peace. This careful observation of the natural world continues to ground her art-making process, which often serves as a method to calm her mind.

Her exploration of the calming power of nature ties directly to the Attention Restoration Theory (A.R.T.), which posits that the human attention system has two modes: ‘involuntary attention’—stimulated by the noise, colors, and movement of the urban world—and ‘focused attention,’ which thrives in low-stimulus environments like nature. Lieke's work examines how this theory applies to art, questioning whether creating or observing art might similarly engage the brain's attention system and offer restorative effects.

In her work, Lieke combines, edits, and distorts natural and manufactured elements, exploring the balance between the human-made and the digital. She examines how optical illusion and digital manipulation might blur the boundaries between the organic and the artificial, asking to what extent A.R.T. remains relevant in today’s digital landscape.

Her practice has evolved over time, moving through photography and video to her current multidisciplinary approach, which layers various techniques to reflect the complexity of her vision. By intentionally slowing down her process, she embraces the philosophy of Satcitananda—"truth, consciousness, bliss"—which inspires her ongoing investigation into reality. This philosophical underpinning, alongside her use of digital and analog photography, drives her to explore how mindful creation can challenge the fast pace of modern artistic production and encourage viewers to reconsider how they engage with art.

Lieke’s work is an invitation to slow down, reflect, and question not just the world we see, but the way we see it.