February 2025

Laurien Dumbar studied painting at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam.

Nowadays, she works with photography. With a camera, she explores the questions of abstract painting.

In her studio, using ephemeral materials such as clay, plastic and paint, she creates ‘spatial situations’ from which she captures with an IPhone the accidental moments of pictorial clarity. From these ‘found’ images she makes large digital prints. They are matt and intense in colour, the skin is real and tangible, but at the same time it is an image. By breaking up the constructive and visual unity of a painting and working only with temporary materials, she creates a free space for exploring the relation between the abstract painterly image and other forms of contemporary image production.

​

Text Jack Meijers, September 2010

Laurien Dumbar explores the boundaries between two- and three-dimensional in research into image and illustration.
Buying an eraser at the Wibra three times a day because it was so nice and warm there? Painting in ski suits? You have to have experienced it to grasp it. Laurien Dumbar (1967, The Hague) remembers the merciless romance of cold, unfired studios from the beginning of her career. ‘From the second year, the academy barely had any working space available. In the late 1980s, at the Willem de Kooning, they relied on the self-reliance of the squatter generation. Because that was essentially what it came down to: that you squatted a building. Dumbar was one of the initiators of the B.a.d Foundation, which started managing vacant spaces as studio space. More than 20 years later, B.a.d still arranges temporary and permanent venues for domestic and foreign artists. Dumbar: ‘We organise exhibitions and art events. Apart from the existing museum and gallery circuit, we try to maintain a dynamic creative network.’ In an old – and heated – school building in Rotterdam’s Charlois district, Dumbar has set up her studio. The new acrylic canvases in black and white on the wall, seem distant relatives of her early, geometric representations in colour. ‘And yet the old paintings have developed in one straight line into what they are today. It is still about landscape, about perspective and spatiality.’
At the academy, Dumbar became aware of her analytical approach to the painting process. ‘I hesitated for a while whether I wouldn’t be better off sculpting. A sculptural approach to painting has always remained. Discussions about a lick more green or red were beyond me. To create clarity for myself, I initially worked with four colours: ochre yellow, red, navy blue and olive green. With these, I wanted to peel off all the layers of painting.’ Dumbar delved into spatial representations in which the painterly element functions as an object. ‘All the painterly elements were arranged as series or in a perspective space. The canvases were an investigation of spatiality and the canvas itself, the support, at one point turned into a kind of (depicted) cabinet. I wanted to find out how to combine isolated painterly elements into a new painting in a new space.’

Spatial explorations
Still, Dumbar explores the boundaries between two- and three-dimensional in research into image and depiction. ‘What does a paint stroke look like if you think of it as a separate thing? I made paint strokes from plaster, cut them out and then photographed them.’ That analytical inversion of dimensions and working with models from clay, plaster and paper led to a form of sculpture on a miniature scale. The question of whether the representations are abstract or figurative cannot be answered unequivocally. Dumbar shows a number of Barbapappa-like mini-sculptures. ‘What do you have to add to give a form an identity, a character? When does a blob-like shape turn into an elephant?’ The three-dimensional studies were the prelude to a series of small paintings in which Dumbar experiments with the effect of a pictorial element. ‘Many people see an elephant with a wig in it. It is interesting to see how colour and recognisability have a threshold-reducing effect. I find that most people are less likely to access formal, abstract work in which all traces of reality have been erased. Most people want to find a meaning, however hidden it may be. When I hang my small paintings in series, many start looking for a system, for something that binds or separates the forms.’
The sketchy black-and-white drawings that Dumbar makes in between as an ‘ecriture automatique’ are the associative precipitation of her spatial explorations. ‘They are unbound accumulations of two- and three-dimensional forms.’ Meanwhile, she has also been working in large format for over a year in black and white. ‘Initially intended as an intermediate step to minimise my palette, I now find a fascinating essence in it.’ On the table are sets for which Dumbar used smeared clay. The clay is so thin, it almost becomes paint. They appear to be preliminary studies for the large acrylic canvases in black and white. ‘I photograph my stirring and scratching in clay. I make black-and-white prints of them, which I then base my large canvases on. You can call it cumbersome, but for me that studious preliminary process is indispensable.’
Dumbar’s large black-and-white paintings have something of abstract, improvised posters without letters, but with images of paint.
As soon as the paint is applied to the canvas, it takes on meaning. But what meaning? ‘I use two kinds of images on top of each other and see when they touch, enter into a relationship with each other. ’

February 2025
Laurien Dumbar studied painting at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam.

Nowadays, she works with photography. With a camera, she explores the questions of abstract painting.

In her studio, using ephemeral materials such as clay, plastic and paint, she creates ‘spatial situations’ from which she captures with an IPhone the accidental moments of pictorial clarity. From these ‘found’ images she makes large digital prints. They are matt and intense in colour, the skin is real and tangible, but at the same time it is an image. By breaking up the constructive and visual unity of a painting and working only with temporary materials, she creates a free space for exploring the relation between the abstract painterly image and other forms of contemporary image production.

​

Text Jack Meijers, September 2010

Laurien Dumbar explores the boundaries between two- and three-dimensional in research into image and illustration.
Buying an eraser at the Wibra three times a day because it was so nice and warm there? Painting in ski suits? You have to have experienced it to grasp it. Laurien Dumbar (1967, The Hague) remembers the merciless romance of cold, unfired studios from the beginning of her career. ‘From the second year, the academy barely had any working space available. In the late 1980s, at the Willem de Kooning, they relied on the self-reliance of the squatter generation. Because that was essentially what it came down to: that you squatted a building. Dumbar was one of the initiators of the B.a.d Foundation, which started managing vacant spaces as studio space. More than 20 years later, B.a.d still arranges temporary and permanent venues for domestic and foreign artists. Dumbar: ‘We organise exhibitions and art events. Apart from the existing museum and gallery circuit, we try to maintain a dynamic creative network.’ In an old – and heated – school building in Rotterdam’s Charlois district, Dumbar has set up her studio. The new acrylic canvases in black and white on the wall, seem distant relatives of her early, geometric representations in colour. ‘And yet the old paintings have developed in one straight line into what they are today. It is still about landscape, about perspective and spatiality.’
At the academy, Dumbar became aware of her analytical approach to the painting process. ‘I hesitated for a while whether I wouldn’t be better off sculpting. A sculptural approach to painting has always remained. Discussions about a lick more green or red were beyond me. To create clarity for myself, I initially worked with four colours: ochre yellow, red, navy blue and olive green. With these, I wanted to peel off all the layers of painting.’ Dumbar delved into spatial representations in which the painterly element functions as an object. ‘All the painterly elements were arranged as series or in a perspective space. The canvases were an investigation of spatiality and the canvas itself, the support, at one point turned into a kind of (depicted) cabinet. I wanted to find out how to combine isolated painterly elements into a new painting in a new space.’

Spatial explorations
Still, Dumbar explores the boundaries between two- and three-dimensional in research into image and depiction. ‘What does a paint stroke look like if you think of it as a separate thing? I made paint strokes from plaster, cut them out and then photographed them.’ That analytical inversion of dimensions and working with models from clay, plaster and paper led to a form of sculpture on a miniature scale. The question of whether the representations are abstract or figurative cannot be answered unequivocally. Dumbar shows a number of Barbapappa-like mini-sculptures. ‘What do you have to add to give a form an identity, a character? When does a blob-like shape turn into an elephant?’ The three-dimensional studies were the prelude to a series of small paintings in which Dumbar experiments with the effect of a pictorial element. ‘Many people see an elephant with a wig in it. It is interesting to see how colour and recognisability have a threshold-reducing effect. I find that most people are less likely to access formal, abstract work in which all traces of reality have been erased. Most people want to find a meaning, however hidden it may be. When I hang my small paintings in series, many start looking for a system, for something that binds or separates the forms.’
The sketchy black-and-white drawings that Dumbar makes in between as an ‘ecriture automatique’ are the associative precipitation of her spatial explorations. ‘They are unbound accumulations of two- and three-dimensional forms.’ Meanwhile, she has also been working in large format for over a year in black and white. ‘Initially intended as an intermediate step to minimise my palette, I now find a fascinating essence in it.’ On the table are sets for which Dumbar used smeared clay. The clay is so thin, it almost becomes paint. They appear to be preliminary studies for the large acrylic canvases in black and white. ‘I photograph my stirring and scratching in clay. I make black-and-white prints of them, which I then base my large canvases on. You can call it cumbersome, but for me that studious preliminary process is indispensable.’
Dumbar’s large black-and-white paintings have something of abstract, improvised posters without letters, but with images of paint.
As soon as the paint is applied to the canvas, it takes on meaning. But what meaning? ‘I use two kinds of images on top of each other and see when they touch, enter into a relationship with each other. ’