Yrma van der Steenstraeten fine art - Blue Rain Studio
Welcome !
Biography
Yrma grew up in Arnhem, the Netherlands. She has lived in Castle Valley, Utah from 2003 untill 2022 and then went back to the Netherlands. She’s been drawing and painting since she could hold a pencil. Her father, a good draftsman and photographer, was her inspiration. Besides starting her out with coloring books and drawing, he handed her his old camera when she was 6 years old and once in high school, he taught her the work in the darkroom.
She studied at ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem and the Utrecht Graphic Design Institute, in the Netherlands. Out of curiosity and with the idea that it would be fun to create her own jewelry she followed silversmith classes. Painting remained her main passion. The fact that she’s a graduated graphic designer came in handy in slower times for the arts.
Through the years she has worked in different styles of painting and illustrating and has given drawing and painting classes to children.
Artists that inspire her are the Dutch artists Rembrandt, Vermeer, Jan Toorop, van Gogh and Carl Willink and the Spanish artists Picasso, Dali and architect Antoni Gaudi and the Frenchman Monet.
Her favorite art and design styles are Art Deco, Jugendstil, Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism and Steampunk.
All this resulted in developing her colorful style. She works with oils and acrylic paints.
Her paintings vary from almost realistic portrayals (sometimes surreal or steampunk) to abstract compositions in warm and/or bright colors.
Her first exhibit in the Netherlands was in 1986 and there were many more after that. Once in the US she has been showing her work in several galleries in Moab and been doing art shows in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and California.
"Creative mind
Where do you wander?
Complex mind
Makes me ponder
All directions or none at all
Never mind my mind
Just let go
O, aching heart
Joyous, loving thing
Give into the passion
Water should flow
Banging on rocks
Washing ashore
Colorful strokes
Straight from the core"
Statement
A passion to share the beauty of nature as she sees it, combined with her feminine touch of the brush resulted in elegant organic forms and flowing brush strokes in her paintings of (parts of) flowers and plants.
Animals are her favorite and latest subject. They are a huge inspiration and it shows in the amount of animal faces she did with the focus on the eyes. “Although some people don’t like the direct stare, find it confrontational even, I consider it an invitation to figure out the creature’s character and soul”.
She likes the challenge to express that in her work. She also hopes that the stare, the direct contact, will make people aware of the animal’s place on this earth in their fragile and precious ecosystem that we tend to interfere with.