Hilde Vandenhout
Staring into Fire
Asemics
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Bio:
Hilde Vandenhout is a mother, artist and psychotherapist. She devoted most of her life to psychoanalysis with a specific focus on Carl Gustave Jung. This is how she discovered creative therapy and how art came to have a prominent spot in her life. Hilde started taking art classes and incorporating art into the healing processes of her clients. Her paintings have been published as illustrations in a book about grief. Five years ago she came across Asemic Art and has since used this art form to express herself in a new way. |
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Artist Statement:
I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks and I still am, but no longer seek in the books or in the stars. I’m beginning to hear the teachings of my blood, pulsing within me. My Story isn’t sweet and harmonious like the invented stories. It tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dreams, like the life of all the people who no longer want to lie to them selves That’s what I found in Asemica. (Hermann Hesse, Demian)
I have rarely been able to experience joy and life the way others have, often I have languished in worries instead. It was as if I was hopelessly seperated from those others, as if life itself was closed off from me.
I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks and I still am, but no longer seek in the books or in the stars. I’m beginning to hear the teachings of my blood, pulsing within me. My Story isn’t sweet and harmonious like the invented stories. It tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dreams, like the life of all the people who no longer want to lie to them selves That’s what I found in Asemica. (Hermann Hesse, Demian)
I have rarely been able to experience joy and life the way others have, often I have languished in worries instead. It was as if I was hopelessly seperated from those others, as if life itself was closed off from me.
I have become accustomed to being alone. It doesn’t depress me, I have so many dreams, thoughts and visualizations. But they were out of reach, I was unable to translate them to the physical world. The ideas wouldn’t take on a colour, or take on a shape the way I wanted them to. It scared me to show an intimate part of myself to the outside world.
I love art where you feel that the artist has bared their soul, has poured every piece of themselves into a work of art. I always aspired to be one of those artists, but something was always holding me back. During one of my desperate attempts to, at least, have some involvement with art, I discovered a group of people who probably didn’t have any of the problems I struggled with. On the contrary, “The Asemic Group of Writing and Art” was not bound by form nor by structure. It seems like in Asemic art, everything is possible, and that the artform even prefers abnormalcy and unconventionality. In the beginning I resisted such freedom, a freeform consisting mostly of lack of meaning.
I have learned so much. It has surprised me how many people try to portray the “real world”, instead of giving their thoughts and feelings their own, original shape. You can be perfectly happy expressing yourself the way everybody else does, but once you learn how to portray yourself in an Asemic way, in an accurate way, unique to you, there’s almost no going back. My dreams no longer live exclusively in my mind. They don’t all exist on paper yet, but I feel them take shape inside of me and I have evolved to being an artist who has found a language to visually share her soul with those around her. Hilde Vandenhout
I love art where you feel that the artist has bared their soul, has poured every piece of themselves into a work of art. I always aspired to be one of those artists, but something was always holding me back. During one of my desperate attempts to, at least, have some involvement with art, I discovered a group of people who probably didn’t have any of the problems I struggled with. On the contrary, “The Asemic Group of Writing and Art” was not bound by form nor by structure. It seems like in Asemic art, everything is possible, and that the artform even prefers abnormalcy and unconventionality. In the beginning I resisted such freedom, a freeform consisting mostly of lack of meaning.
I have learned so much. It has surprised me how many people try to portray the “real world”, instead of giving their thoughts and feelings their own, original shape. You can be perfectly happy expressing yourself the way everybody else does, but once you learn how to portray yourself in an Asemic way, in an accurate way, unique to you, there’s almost no going back. My dreams no longer live exclusively in my mind. They don’t all exist on paper yet, but I feel them take shape inside of me and I have evolved to being an artist who has found a language to visually share her soul with those around her. Hilde Vandenhout