14 october 2025, Martine Bontjes
The studio of... Lily van der Stokker
At the beginning of her career, she sawed wooden planks from the Brooklyn Bridge to make a table for her gallery on the Lower East Side. Now, forty years later, Lily van der Stokker has settled into a project space on Lomanstraat in Amsterdam-Zuid, fully equipped and complete. She still lives and works in New York, yet she prefers to create from her studios in Amsterdam or Bilthoven, where she recently spent her time. The results can now be seen all across Amsterdam.
Through her monumental wall paintings and text works, Van der Stokker draws you into her joyful cloud world, as in her work Nothing Wall at Galerie van Gelder. For decades, she reveals the power of the soft, the sweet, and the decorative. With her work, she pays a tribute to domestic life and to themes such as care, relationships and aging. Soon another Nothing Wall will appear on the construction fence of the future Hartwig Museum, and for the next two years the text "Schattige babyvoetjes" ("cute baby feet") will be visible at the NDSM wharf.
You work both in the Netherlands and abroad. Where are your studios and in which place do you prefer to work?
I prefer being in Amsterdam, or in Bilthoven where I have a beautiful studio with a garden. But I also miss my apartment in New York. I spend a little less time there than I used to, though next May and June I’ll be there again to install a new solo exhibition at Gallery Kaufmann Repetto in Tribeca.
You started your career with your own art and gallery space in New York, which you furnished yourself. How do your current studios look like? Did you also make the furniture there yourself?
Haha, what a funny question. You must have read my book How I went to New York 1983–1992 how I used to go to the Brooklyn Bridge at night by bike, cut seven-meter-long planks into manageable pieces right there, and later turned them into a large table that stood at the heart of my gallery. I don’t make furniture anymore. I used to make all kinds of things myself, but now I’m forty years older, and when I acquired my new project space last year, we were simply happy we didn’t have to renovate anything. We only went to Ikea to buy some kitchen supplies.
Lily van der Stokker, Decent, tidy, 2014, Galerie van Gelder
In the 1990s you and several other women in the art world formed the “zeurclub” (“complaint club”). Do you still meet, or is there another circle with whom you share thoughts about the art world?
That group includes Mirjam Westen, Ineke Werther, Helma Pantus and Kinke Kooi, and yes, we still see each other often and are friends for life.
You recently set up a project space that focuses not on your own work, but on the work of others. What was the starting point for StokkerJaeger?
The project space StokkerJaeger is the future home of the De Stokker Jaeger Foundation. The foundation is not yet active, but it will be after I’m gone. It will manage the archives of my work and that of my late partner Jack (Jaeger, cameraman, artist, curator and New Yorker, 1937–2013). Long ago, he and I decided that our possessions should ultimately flow back into the art world, with our New York apartments serving as artist residencies. But since I’m still here, we’re now using StokkerJaeger to present exhibitions.
You work on a large scale, from kitchens to monumental wall paintings. Could you tell us more about your collaboration with assistants, such as De Strakke Hand? How does that work in practice, on-site?
The Retrokitchen from 2022 wasn’t actually that large, about two by three meters, but it was beautifully detailed, painted by my regular assistants while we were in London. I’ve also painted two entire buildings: The Pink Building in Hanover in 2000, which was seventy by forty meters, and Het Groen Geruite Huis in Ostend in 2015. We also made a large mural in the lobby of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Tidy Kitchen (2015), a cheerful, colorful text piece about keeping your home clean. I used to paint all my wall works myself, but later I needed assistants so we could complete the murals within one or two weeks. These days, I no longer paint or mix colors myself; the assistants do that. I handle logistics, the design, and help with everything: projecting, drawing on the wall, and directing the process. For larger outdoor murals, a specialized company is sometimes hired, like last year on the High Line in New York for the Thank You Darling mural (17 x 9 meters), and now De Strakke Hand for the Nothing Wall at the Hartwig Art Foundation along the Parnassusweg.
How did that process go for your current mural, the Nothing Wall at Galerie van Gelder?
While working on the design for the four-and-a-half-meter-high walls, I couldn’t resist continuing to draw, adding the first "nothing doodles" with a different kind of squiggle, like the curls and decorations you also see in my earlier colorful works. It starts with a sheet of white paper and a pencil, then one line, which becomes a scribble, starts to resemble text, turns into an underline or a ray, then curls, then a cloud. The association with cloud-like forms is that they mean nothing. Hence the title Nothing Wall From those curls, round forms and clouds, flowers naturally emerged. The image of the flower has a low status because it is decorative, superficial and meaningless. That meaninglessness of the decorative has always fascinated me, and “nothing” has always been present in my work. You can see that throughout my earlier drawings.
Lily van der Stokker, Nothing Wall, Galerie van Gelder
In recent years, there has been considerable interest in your early work in the Netherlands. To what do you attribute this renewed attention?
In the 1990s - thirty-five years ago now - I began making friendly and sweet works of art. This subject provoked resistance, but at the same time I received much recognition from a new generation of international gallerists and curators. I was living in New York then, and my gallerist Hudson discovered me in 1989 and understood the essence of my work. Over time, more themes entered my murals: the "name pieces" about friends and colleagues, my relationship with Jack, quarrels and money, beauty and ugliness, healthcare and aging. But especially in the Netherlands, people now ask me to recreate and discuss my early friendly works. I enjoy that because I’m proud of them. Apparently, those works touched on taboos that haven’t yet been fully processed and still need attention. Friendly and sweet can also mean soft and sentimental. Some people were even angry or disgusted by it.
In the 1990s, you received scathing reviews. Some of those critics have now admitted they were wrong. How does it feel to receive their recognition now?
I keep all my reviews in folders, and luckily, I have more positive ones than negative. It’s interesting that some of those critics have revised their opinions. I’m glad and a bit proud that there’s now more attention for subjects and visual languages associated with women, and that people can articulate that better. I think the writers who ridiculed my work back then failed to notice that the feminist avant-garde was emerging, and worse, they tried to eliminate it. That’s understandable in the context of the time, but also regrettable. On the other hand, it’s nice to receive respect and recognition for the work I made then. I did receive a lot of attention in the early nineties, but mostly abroad.
Lily van der Stokker, Nothing Wall, Galerie van Gelder
Because there is so much focus on your decorative “girly art,” your other themes, such as care, money and conflict, sometimes receive less attention. Does that affect the subjects you choose for new projects?
I follow my own path. Recently, for the Nothing Wall I chose a black line drawing, which is not unfamiliar to me. Your question makes clear that people have fixated on my cheerful floral works, which has led to me being labeled as making “girly art”, a label I find quite annoying.
At the NDSM wharf, the green text Schattige babyvoetjes ("cute baby feet") will be visible for the next two years. Why did you choose text rather than form here?
In 2022, I was invited to create something for the exterior of my home and studio on Valeriusstraat as part of the “Welcome Stranger” project. It became the large-scale text piece Dakterras met Bubbelbad. Later, the NDSM Wharf Foundation expressed interest in taking over that work, but since it had already been destroyed, they asked me for a new text. At first, I thought of covering the buildings with huge words for household objects: shower cap, dirty socks, baby clothes, mop. A kind of ode to domestic life. But such a large-scale project couldn’t be funded. So in the end I decided on a single text piece, placed on the so-called Slipway Building, which also houses the foundation. After some back-and-forth emailing and brainstorming, the choice became “cute baby feet.” It stands in powerful contrast to its rough surroundings. It is a political artwork, since feminine work in public space remains rare. Yet this piece is not bitter but cheerful, gentle and full of love.
Lily van der Stokker, Schattige babyvoetjes, NDSM-werf
For the construction fence of the future Hartwig Museum, you are realizing a new outdoor Nothing Wall. What can we expect from this mural?
It’s beautiful, decorative and spectacular, it’s enlarged, meaningless doodling. We’re afraid that the wall will be plastered with posters as soon as it’s installed. If it’s covered with graffiti, I might get to make my own graffiti over it. So keep an eye on that wall!
