PROFILE

Marlien Kulsdom is a visual artist with a background in fashion design, having graduated from the Amsterdam Fashion Institute (AMFI). Her creative journey is rooted in a passion for detail and composition. Often drawing from nature, the female form, mathematical structures, and surreal symbolism.

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Originally working in fashion, Marlien became increasingly aware of the industry's harmful impact on the environment. This realization prompted a major shift in her path. Choosing integrity over convention, she left fashion behind to pursue a more honest and sustainable form of expression through painting.

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Her work now focuses on themes such as climate change, escapism, and the search for sanctuary: a gateway to another world just beyond the visible horizon. Her canvases flicker with neon light -symbols once steeped in hope and progress- now pulsing with uncertainty. In these glowing lines, she expresses her unease with a future shaped by digital illusions. Her work urges us to question whether we will awaken from this haze in time to reconnect with the physical, the real, and the meaningful. Are we drifting deeper into comfort, into curated truths, while the real world slips further from view?

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Her paintings are layered both in pigment and in concept. She works with muddied tones—ochre, indigo, and green—blended with textured layers that reveal a history beneath each final image. Traces of past decisions, shifts, and revisions. This layered technique mirrors the complexity of life itself, tracing the winding paths we walk, the intersections we encounter, and the quiet tension of trying to find balance in a chaotic world.

Through her work, Marlien invites the viewer to pause—to step out of the digital haze and into something more tactile, more uncertain, and ultimately, more real.