Biography
Patrice van Ramshorst was born in The Hague, the Netherlands in 1955. She studied at the Minerva Academy of Art and Design in Groningen between 1972 and 1976 and the Reinwardt Museology Faculty of the Amsterdam School of Arts. For several years she was an art teacher at different secondary schools. Since 1982 she has been working as an independent artist.
Patrice has lived and worked in Maastricht since 1986. She found her inspiration by travelling throughout several countries in different continents outside Europe, like Kenya, Morocco, China, Mexico, Indonesia, and the Caribbean. There she found the magic, the rituals, the family traditions and the down to earth cultures she feels familiar with.
She mostly works in serial paintings or other art forms like collages with mixed techniques. For example: African period, the Elements, Metaphors, Amulets, Frida Kahlo and Opera. Her works are mainly figurative. The human figure, often female, plays a central role. Themes are the potential power of women, pride, passion, vulnerability, vitality and resilience.
Her powerfully painted figures come to life through a multi-layered painting technique, starting with acrylics and then completed by adding several layers of oil paint. The layers of paint vary in thickness from thin and transparent to thick and pasty. If needed, she adds a wide variety of different materials to the canvas, like in the Frida Kahlo series.
Her use of colour is exuberant, intense and warm-blooded. Her general style is characterised by the words impulse and instinct.