The Gallows Tree (2007) Back I carved this sculpture out of Alabaster, a somewhat translucent stone with irregular dark spots and called it ‘Gallows Tree’. Why I did will become clear when you read the story ‘The Indonesian who stole opium’, Alabaster, 48 cm. […]

Before the war, skin colour meant nothing to me. I, of course, noticed that we were attending an almost all-white school and that all of our servants were brown. But it wasn’t until we were in the internment camp that it dawned on me: […]

Indonesian Grandmother (2007) Back On one of our trips to my native Indonesia, we were walking on a small road between the rice fields. Ahead of us was an old grandmother walking proudly upright. An older child was showing her the way, as she […]

Below and above water (2005) Marianne van den Heuvel (Sculpture School Under the Bogen) commissioned us to create an image that would express the notion of being simultaneously above and under water. The dimensions had to be 10 x 10 x 10 cm and […]

In the year 2000, when I turned 65, I decided to realise a dream from my youth: sculpting. I used to draw and mould clay with dedication under the guidance of our art teacher, Jan Elffers, at the Montessori Lyceum in Amsterdam. The classroom, […]