Nelleke van Lomwel
BIOGRAPHY
Nelleke van Lomwel (b.1995, Breda, The Netherlands) is a self-taught painter, based in Amsterdam. She creates paintings that inhabit the space between belief and uncertainty. Through recurring figures, animals, and archetypal forms, she develops a personal symbolic language that explores questions of sacredness and ritual. Her work is driven by an interest in how humans construct meaning in response to an often absurd and unpredictable world, and how symbols function as carriers of both collective and personal knowledge.
Central to her practice is the notion of existential mobility. Living with a physical disability, and having experienced periods in which illness severely restricted her movement, painting became a way to travel beyond the constraints of the body. This tension between physical limitation and imaginative expansion continues to inform her work.
Through colour, symbolism, and repetition,Van Lomwel approaches painting as both a process of meaning-making and a ritualized inquiry into what sustains us, connects us, and helps us find orientation in an uncertain world.