“It is dreamlike,” says Hanneke De Neve.
The artist is looking up from a table in the ballroom at the Present Day Club in Princeton.
It’s where her painted and embroidered fabrics and fibers, drawings, oil and acrylic paintings, and monoprints are on view until June 16.
“I make up stories,” she continues about her style — a European modernism that emerged in her native Netherlands and that has sustained her for decades of exhibiting in New Jersey, Philadelphia, and New York.
“I use some actual events and combine them. I try to convey my feelings and views about things. But, of course, in the end, it has to be a doable painting — a picture.”
She then gazes at one her works and continues, “I mean, nice to look at. It doesn’t need to be pretty or beautiful, but it has to have a good composition — and color.”
She then shares thoughts about her approach. “When I make my initial sketch, there is a horizon. Then I create compartments; I create space: rooms, landscapes.”
She also creates her “own images” that go “from realism to abstract. I play with that in-between. I have created my own style that way.”
Returning to the idea of dreams, she says they can come from “actual events or after reading stories or reading the newspaper or hearing the news I can put my emotions totally in the work. Whether it is politically correct or not, I don’t know.
“They can be very humorous and funny. They’re not always personal. I am the observer. They make good drawings.”
The artist uses a dream book to write or draw about the images that come to her while she sleeps.
“They are lies,” she says. “They are not true. But if you see them in the drawing, then at that moment they are real.”
And, she adds, “They are never nightmares. They are always fun. I also dream about my friends.”
Playing with dreams and ideas that blend fact and fancy has been part of De Neve’s life since childhood. “My mom would say, ‘Don’t listen to this child, she makes things up.’ But at the same time, she understood I wanted to be an artist. I was lucky to have a mom like that.”
The artist who now lives in a mid-20th century tract of homes in Hamilton Township says she grew up on a farm in the town of De Heen.
“We had sheep, cows, horses, cats, and dogs. (My father) grew potatoes and sugar beets. In those days farmers did everything.
“They worked hard, my parents. My mother was the business one. She was the bookkeeper and manager. My father was the worker.
“All my family are all farmers. My aunts and uncles are all farmers. My mom ran the orchard, apples, pears, cherries, strawberries, and a vegetable garden, of course.”
About her own connection to farming, she says, “We had to help out. I worked there on Saturdays. Heaven forbid you had to work on Sundays.”
And while she is away from the farm still operated by her family and no longer listens to the radio only for the weather forecast, farming is still part of her. “You grow up with a work ethic. It is instilled with you.”
She also keeps the connection by having a small garden of vegetables, fruit trees, and flowers in her backyard — an easy escape from her basement painting studio.
“My mom made me get a teaching degree,” she says about her training and attending the Art Academy in Tilburg.
“They were fantastic,” she says about the faculty. “Most of them were professional artists, and they were teaching and painting at home at the same time. They were well known.”
Although it was a Catholic school and the courses were geared toward fashion design, the education was designed to open their eyes. “The first week we had a male model. Some of us had never seen anyone stark naked.”
At other times, academics and practicality were mixed. “One guy would bring a fresh fish for a still life session, and we’d take it home (to cook).”
After graduating, De Neve got a job teaching, met a young man at a party, married him, and had two sons.
Then in 1974, her husband — an employee of the Dutch lighting company Philips — was transferred to its Hightstown division, and the family moved to central New Jersey.
“When I got homesick, I would bring my children to Princeton and walk around because it was the only town that reminded me of a little Dutch town,” she says of the time when she was living in Hightstown and East Windsor.
After a third child, she says, the marriage faltered, and she returned to the Netherlands. However, when she realized that her children had become acclimated to New Jersey, she came back to the Garden State.
It was here and then that she emerged as a working artist — only pausing for an occasional short-term teaching job or picking up housekeeping jobs.
“I lived in an apartment in Cranbury, and it took six years to paint my way out” to buy a home in Hamilton Township, she says.
She did it by painting and selling art T-shirts that she would buy in bulk and used fabric paint to put designs and faces on them.
“I started doing art shows. I would leave at 4 in the morning. I’d go to New York City. I would go to the Rittenhouse Square (in Philadelphia). People have no trouble buying a $50 T-shirt. But they won’t buy a drawing.”
She estimates she sold around 5,000 during that time — enough for a down payment.
It was also during that time that she connected with her now long-time art representative, C.J. Mugavero.
The latter was just opening her Artful Deposit Gallery in a former bank in Allentown (the gallery is now in Bordentown) and contacted De Neve after spotting one of her paintings in a doctor’s office.
“In the early days I would pay doctors with paintings,” says the artist.
Since then, despite some part-time work as a house cleaner or teaching, De Neve has made her living as an artist.
“I made my luck,” she says, “I realized that this is all I am good at. I’m very confident about my work.”
She is also organized and has fitted her two-story home into three distinct works spaces. Upstairs is solely for fabric art. The basement is for painting and printmaking. One side is for acrylic works. The other is for oil — and has a door that allows fresh air in and an escape for the artist when she wants to visit her vegetables and flowers.
Her talk then moves back to her process. “When I am painting I have no sense of criticism. That comes a day or week later. That’s when I need to redo things. There are days when paintings go really well, and there are days that I think I’d better go back to my fabric.”
She says she knows that a work is finished through a combination of experience, aesthetics, and a simple question: “Can I take this on the road or to a gallery? Sometimes I look at it and think that I should have changed that. It is like weeding things out.”
While confident, she does share same personal criticism. “I try too many different ways (of expression). If you’re a smart business person, you’ll bring only a painting in a certain style. A certain look.”
However, each of her approaches reflect a different part of her life and says her work in fabric is connected to her early training, her first sold work, and necessity — she couldn’t paint while living in an apartment with three children.
And while the works are different, she says there is a common line. “They’re linked by dreams and work habits.”
It’s something evident in her current show in Princeton where fiber art, pen and ink works, monoprints, and oil and acrylic paintings of various sizes conjure faces, cats, birds, moods, memories of a small town in the Netherlands, and images inspired by drawings created by her grandchildren.
Looking ahead, De Neve talks about her upcoming trips to participate in an art fair in Westport, Connecticut.
However, she’s taking a year off from selling at Washington Square in New York City. Part of the reason is that she is going to travel to different states to see her grandchildren and home town.
She is also weary of getting up early, traveling to art fairs, and sometimes sleeping in her van.
She adds that before COVID , she planned to stop participating in art fairs when she was 75. But now, since she is beyond that, 80 is her new target.
Meanwhile, she sums up everything by saying, “I am just so lucky just to be able to do this.”
Art in the Ballroom: Hanneke de Neve, Present Day Club, 72 Stockton Street, Princeton. Through June 16, open Fridays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., call ahead at 609 924-1014.
For more on the artist, visit www.hannekedeneveart.com or artfuldeposit.com.
