Paleolithic cave art was made by customized painting techniques, one of which is the use of the mouth as a compressor to spray paint against the hand which makes a silhouette appear on a wall: the predecessor of aerosol. The long history of painting since leaves painters exceedingly little space to nd a personal application of existing methods in order to nd a truly personal visual language. The use and manipulation of spray paint in the work of Frederique Jonker should therefore not be taken lightly. As it is applied, scraped and reapplied in several layers to the canvas, semi-translucent layers form a 3-dimensional trompe l’oeil of delicately formed spaces. Balancing harmony and energy, the movements within the painting can all be traced back to the body of the painter; large, uid gestures reveal the rhythmic ow, simultaneously a dance and a trance, which in turn reveal the state-of-mind with which these paintings have made. The physical, mental, tonal and musical harmony and/or accelerations on the canvas embody Jonker’s personal odyssey, which the viewer can follow in reverse order by letting the eye trickle down each layer of paint, starting from the surface. (Melvin Moti, 2017)

Frederique Jonker (b. 1999, Breda) was a resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in 2016 and 2017. She received her BFA from Frank Mohr instituut, Groningen, NL in 2015 and lives and works in Amsterdam. Her work is in the collection of the LAM museum, Lisse and the VU Art collection.