Renie Spoelstra (Drachten, 1974) lives and works in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. She uses film footage as a starting point for her charcoal drawings. The depicted natural forces appear balanced as the dead point of the swing, a moment to hold one’s breath. For Spoelstra these moments evoke a deep existential desire or longing. Ron Mandos Gallery in Amsterdam represents her work
The intention of the huge charcoal drawings of Renie Spoelstra is to let the viewer experience an atmosphere of deliberate apathy; hours and days go by in a split second, every moment frozen in time and every moment equal to the other.
Consequently, characteristics of actual observations are diminished, making the unique more common and indefinite, so that they can function as a substitute for many similar places.
She started taking pictures of Dutch forests and recreational areas in 2001. She concentrates on what she calls the absence of climax, in the sense that nothing is actually or visibly happening. These pictures are the starting point of her drawings. Nowadays she uses (self made) film stills instead of pictures and travels mainly to North America. By drawing, she searches for the desired atmosphere, using specific properties of the material.