This is a story told in pictures. Lieke’s van der Vorst’s magical illustrations dance between fairytales and the delights of childhood memories.

Making is important to this artist, the domestic world a place of keen observation, the beauty of the mundane, the worn out, the rustic, the handmade somehow the most glorious visual parade of wonderfulness.

Ordinary places take on an element of joy, mystical figures captivate and remind each of us of the splendor of time spent unfettered, observing, watching, and playing. If only each of us could remember so well. There are many intricate and loving portraits of domestic life, reflecting her feeling of a purity that exists in animals.

Lieke prefers to draw her surroundings, and so there is a certain sweet familiarity in her pictures, a place of warmth and dearness, yet a pantheon of animals and allegorical images make the iconography distinctly hers.

“I was born in a little village in the south of the Netherlands, where I grew up with my parents and dog. When it was my birthday or any other celebration I was asking for tools to paint, draw or illustrate. I think it was something that I always loved to do. When traveling, I drew everything that I saw, from Greek balcony’ to the sheds of the south of France.”

The artist includes animals doing everyday things, bears taking journeys, riding in boats, comforting humans. Lieke remarks she has thought a long time about her affinity for these creatures, and thinks perhaps it is because they have a human quality.

Bij de wortels, 2013 is about the fulfilling experience of growing one’s own food, the taste, the self-sufficiency, the appeal of work.

The design project Hendrik, 2013 is a handmade life size goat, made from local Sheep wool.