Jackie Sleper on NY Arts Magazine

The Sacred and Divine

By Edward Rubin

It’s easy to think of mankind and nature when coming face to face with the work of artist Jackie Sleper, who is based in Utrecht, the Netherlands. For in every work of art that she creates, be it a painting, a photograph, or one of her intricate jewel-like sculptures, no matter what the subject matter is, landscape or portrait, sectarian or religious, there is something sacred and divine emanating from her work that captures both the transitory nature of beauty and the fragility of life. No doubt this magic-like melding of the earthly and the spiritual, which forms the basis of the artist’s philosophy, as well as informs her artistic output, stems in large part from her earlier education in agriculture and horticulture, even before enrolling at the Utrecht Academy for Visual Arts, where she studied painting and photography. It was at the academy, as a young lady, living and working on a farm, while pursuing her agricultural degree, that the artist was exposed to the life and death cycles of plants, animals, and the earth that supports them, on a daily basis. What better way to prepare oneself to be an artist.

Though Sleper likes to say that she was “born an artist,” it wasn’t until she was seven or eight years old when her aunt gave her a book on Frida Kahlo that she was fully awakened to her life’s calling. “I knew right then and there, and I thank Frida for this, that making art, which I was already doing much to the disapproval of my parents, was how I was going to spend the rest my life.” For the past 25 years, first locally, then countrywide, and now internationally, Sleper, who has also studied her craft in Spain, Ireland, and Czechoslovakia, has been building a reputation of some import. She was invited to participate in the Biennale Austria in 2006, and OPEN10 International Sculptures and Installations Exhibition in 2007, which is held annually in Lido, Venice. In the same year she participated in the Florence Biennale, where an international jury awarded her first prize for her sculpture and painting installations, Modestia and Dulce Y Amargo.

Sleper has been gifted with boundless energy. Every minute of her waking life, both day and night, she can be found tending to the needs of her large family, creating her art, and planning her next ten moves, sometimes doing all three at once. Being interested in world cultures and how people live their daily lives, all of which she appears to digest effortlessly during her travels, lately she has been focusing her attention on exhibiting abroad. At the Florence Biennale in 2005, the Mexico-based curator Matty Roca, also a biennale juror, was so impressed with Sleper’s soul-catching Chinese paintings and sculptures, which developed out of the artist’s trips to China, that she invited Sleper to visit her in Mexico. The resultant affair—the artist’s love of Mexico and its people—sent Sleper back home, where she spent a year channeling the soul of the Mexican people into 25 paintings and sculptures. It also led to a Roca-curated eight-museum exhibition that is currently traveling in Mexico through May 2009.

Sleper has been fascinated by Mexico ever since her early bonding with Kahlo. “Till this day whenever I look into Kahlo’s face I get goose bumps,” she said. “Seeing her eyes is like looking into my own. As an art student I wrote many stories and made many sketches and drawings about Mexico in my journal. Having my work travel to Mexico now, something that I never even dreamed of is like a prophecy fulfilled, one that brings me full circle. Growing up, I read every book about Frida that I could get my hands on. I related to Kahlo’s loneliness. I felt that we both shared a great love of humanity. Sure her work is very personal…all those self-portraits. But she was able to turn the personal into the universal, so that we all could share the pain and joy of living. This is my goal as an artist. When people see my work, I want them to feel alive, to feel good, and to be wondrously happy in the knowing that despite how hard and painful life can be that there is great joy to be had. This is why I titled my exhibition Dulce Y Amargo, which means bittersweet in English.”

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