Artist Resumé
I am Marlous Neelissen (2000 in Leiden), an abstract painter exploring the boundaries of painting: its function, limitations, and ability to transform perception. My work is driven by the tension between chaos and control. Like the beginning of time, I start with chaos. When chaos becomes overwhelming, I counterbalance it with precision, creating a dynamic push and pull, like a dance or fight. The marks of painting reveals time and tension, each layer and brushstroke capturing the energy of its making. Through this dialogue, the work unfolds organically, allowing me to navigate the unknown.
The small-scale world, extended my imagination. Now I use the microscope as a tool to moving between macro and micro scales, of navigating vastness and intimacy through brushwork. I paint to imagine places my body cannot reach. Trying to understand scopes and worlds that outreach my physical understanding of the world. This shifting stretches perception, what was once too small to notice becomes monumental.
I don’t seek to offer answers in my work. I want to create space for questions, for the viewer to experience tension, to navigate ambiguity. My work exists in limbo: between presence and trace, material and metaphysical, control and chaos. Painting became an act of recalibrating perception, stretching and distorting scale, and exploring motion as form. The concept of perception melted together with the borders of the frame; a limiting view. Painting, for me, is both an externalization of inner experience and a tool for discovery.
My desire to unsettle, my desire to discover, my desire for bringing the viewer into the mind of the artist drive me to write from the first person. My writing becomes another level of questioning, another potential realm to poetically infiltrate. To write without I, feels like an all-too-common lie. A weak attempt at deception. I attempt to question the process of creation, where it begins, where it ends, and where it starts all over again. I am created by my art as much as I create it. From this perspective, I cannot write without the I there. The performative third person would be to remove myself from the analysis. This gesture would be an injustice to the work I made, the work that makes me, continuously
The small-scale world, extended my imagination. Now I use the microscope as a tool to moving between macro and micro scales, of navigating vastness and intimacy through brushwork. I paint to imagine places my body cannot reach. Trying to understand scopes and worlds that outreach my physical understanding of the world. This shifting stretches perception, what was once too small to notice becomes monumental.
I don’t seek to offer answers in my work. I want to create space for questions, for the viewer to experience tension, to navigate ambiguity. My work exists in limbo: between presence and trace, material and metaphysical, control and chaos. Painting became an act of recalibrating perception, stretching and distorting scale, and exploring motion as form. The concept of perception melted together with the borders of the frame; a limiting view. Painting, for me, is both an externalization of inner experience and a tool for discovery.
My desire to unsettle, my desire to discover, my desire for bringing the viewer into the mind of the artist drive me to write from the first person. My writing becomes another level of questioning, another potential realm to poetically infiltrate. To write without I, feels like an all-too-common lie. A weak attempt at deception. I attempt to question the process of creation, where it begins, where it ends, and where it starts all over again. I am created by my art as much as I create it. From this perspective, I cannot write without the I there. The performative third person would be to remove myself from the analysis. This gesture would be an injustice to the work I made, the work that makes me, continuously
Born 2000 in Leiden
Lives and works in Haarlem
Education
2023 – 2025
BA Fine Arts, Royal Academy of Art (KABK), The Hague, The Netherlands
2022 – 2023
Propedeutic Year, Fine Arts, Royal Academy of Art (KABK), The Hague, The Netherlands
2018 – 2020
School for Young Talent – HAVO & Visual Arts, The Hague, The Netherlands
2016 – 2018
Nieuwe Vide Academy, Haarlem, The Netherlands
Exhibitions
2026 (Upcoming)
Kunstpodium T, Tilburg, The Netherlands
De Kunstronde, Vecht en Plassen, group exhibition, Kortenhoef
KunstRAI, Artfair, Sluijters, Amsterdam
2025
One Night Stands, group exhibition, Tilburg
2024
Somersault, group exhibition
Graduation Show, KABK, The Hague
Art-Related Experience
2022
Assistant Project Manager, Studium Generale
2024
Guide & Gard, Voorlinden
BA Fine Arts, Royal Academy of Art (KABK), The Hague, The Netherlands
2022 – 2023
Propedeutic Year, Fine Arts, Royal Academy of Art (KABK), The Hague, The Netherlands
2018 – 2020
School for Young Talent – HAVO & Visual Arts, The Hague, The Netherlands
2016 – 2018
Nieuwe Vide Academy, Haarlem, The Netherlands
Exhibitions
2026 (Upcoming)
Kunstpodium T, Tilburg, The Netherlands
De Kunstronde, Vecht en Plassen, group exhibition, Kortenhoef
KunstRAI, Artfair, Sluijters, Amsterdam
2025
One Night Stands, group exhibition, Tilburg
2024
Somersault, group exhibition
Graduation Show, KABK, The Hague
Art-Related Experience
2022
Assistant Project Manager, Studium Generale
2024
Guide & Gard, Voorlinden
Contact: neelissen[dot]marlous[at]gmail[dot]com