Isabelle Van Zeijl
About
Isabelle van Zeijl is an established mid-career and well-collected internationally acclaimed artist. She was recognized for her mastery of creating striking self-portraits with depth and meaning that enrich life and possess lasting and impressionable depth and value.
Van Zeijl dips into the post-modern to craft a vision of feminine power that will have you questioning both historical and 21st-century concepts of beauty. Van Zeijl produces the scenes independently; she is both model, creator, object, and subject. Her work possesses a timeless beauty, transcending the boundaries of epoch and media.
As a woman, she experiences prejudices against women and misogyny in numerous ways, including sex discrimination, belittling, violence against women, and sexual objectification. "I asked myself what human being I needed to forge into and how I could use my burden to bring light to make a change in the world. I decided to turn my eye to all the beautiful around me." In her work, Van Zeijl aestheticizes these prejudices to visually discuss this troubling dichotomy, presenting a new way of seeing female beauty, the reinvention of the self.
These ideas are also represented in The Rebirth of The Dutch Flower collection. This series of photographs uses discarded flowers from her local growers to highlight the unfortunate mass destruction during the world lockdown. But the enigmatic photographs are also a celebration of hope as they give the flowers new life by suggesting renewal, rebirth, and reinvention. As Van Zeijl explains, "Flowers grow out of dark moments. The more difficulties they face, the more beautiful they become; they always tend to grow towards the light."
She invests in her images by using subjects that intrigue and evoke emotion. For her Moonshot collection, Van Zeijl was inspired by the deeper meaning of the horse and decided to portray herself with them. For years, she worked with horses. She learned to connect, listen deeply, embody their wisdom, and experience how horses guided her toward greater freedom. She had to evolve into complete surrender to gain the horse's trust. Van Zeijl reinvents herself repeatedly and has created a body of work beyond individual expression.
Her work soothes the eye and touches the soul to encourage the viewer to reconnect with their own higher calling, their soulful longing. To remind them to deepen their courage and humility, empower self-inquiry, and ask themselves to reach into their soul for greatness and find that beauty is always there.
Van Zeijl has shown work continuously and internationally over the past seventeen years, represented by galleries in The USA, UK, and Europe and exhibiting at established international art fairs in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, London, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, and Italy. She was among the winners of The Young Masters Emerging Women Art Prize, London. Her work is held in The Four Seasons Hotel in Paris and numerous & public collections in the USA, UK, Belgium, Germany, France, and The Netherlands.
