There is hardly any room left in Marleen de Man’s house in Eindhoven. There are images everywhere that the artist has made over the course of her career. “My images used to have a face, but since I can only see five percent, I can no longer make eyes,” she says. “There have now been so many that I have decided to donate the proceeds from the sales to KIKA.”
Marleen could still see everything until she was sixty. “The ophthalmologist told me that I had Stargardt’s disease. My parents were both carriers of the disease, but they did not have it themselves,” says Marleen. Stargardt is a rare eye condition that causes permanent difficulty in recognizing faces, reading and watching TV. “When someone stands in front of me, I see I only see the vague outlines of that person. What I try to see remains invisible to me,” says Marleen.
Her visual impairment had a major influence on the way she worked. “I used to be able to make small faces very precisely. Now I work much coarser. When I make a large image, I can still incorporate the shape of a face, but no more eyes or only closed eyes.”
From hobbyist to artist
75-year-old Marleen was born in Vlaardingen. After her marriage she lived in Zoetermeer for a long time. There she was first introduced to clay in the early 1990s, during a ceramics course. In the first years she made extremely detailed images. In 1994, Marleen moved with her family to Eindhoven, where she immediately joined the BKT (Practitioners of Ceramic Techniques).
“It’s not that special, an artist who doesn’t see anything.”
“If you can still see, you don’t realize that there may come a time when that is no longer the case. It was slow for me. When I realized I couldn’t see anymore, I was down for maybe two weeks. After that I decided that I didn’t want to keep complaining. I am naturally positive and I started to find out what I could still do, with all the tools available.”
Marleen also joined the Foundation Cubesan organization for blind and visually impaired artists. “It’s not that special, an artist who doesn’t see anything,” Marleen says, laughing. “Everyone makes art there in their own way, and we organize beautiful exhibitions. Thanks to Kubes I have been able to exhibit in the most beautiful places. Moreover, since I joined Kubes I have been called an ‘artist’. Before that I was just a hobbyist.”
“I find it difficult to part with my images.”
To make some space in her house, Marleen would like to sell a number of sculptures. “Otherwise my children would be stuck with it, and they already have statues of me in their houses,” she says, laughing.
“I find it difficult to part with my images and certainly don’t want to give them away for next to nothing. I would like to sell them for a nice amount. In addition, the money goes to a charity, such as KIKA, which conducts research into childhood cancer. A win-win situation, which also gives me space,” says Marleen with a smile.
