Born 1944 more pictures
Baukje Zijlstra was born in the Netherlands but has been living in Denmark since1974.
She has a degree in art from The Royal Academy in Arnhem, Netherlands, as well as degrees in museology, theory of education and restoration. Baukje Zijlstra been worked as a scientific staff member at several museums in the Netherlands, one of which is Rijksmuseum in Amster-dam.
Baukje Zijlstra is a versatile artist and works in numerous media including: paint, print, weaving sculpture and mixed media. She has participated in curated exhibitions in several countries, and has been awarded about 90 art prizes.
From her early youth Baukje Zijlstra has been in contact with the psychiatric system. In 1981 she suffered a mental crisis that developed into a psychosis. Baukje Zijlstra chose not to go through normal treatment. She had tried it several times before without positive result so this time she decided, guided by psychotherapist Peter Hollnagel, to start a self healing process which she called: “What can you do yourself”. Baukje Zijlstra didn’t take any medicine but chose a treatment consisting only of expressing herself through art, talks with the psychotherapist and writing a diary.
The works presented here are examples taken from a collection of 150 pieces created during her healing process, and span a year. We see a cycle of motifs clearly showing the changes from the negative symbolic images and texts in the collages to the last piece, the postcard saying “I’m fine”.
Baukje Zijlstra had come out of her psychosis and she hasn’t had any psychotic episode since then.
About her self-healing process, Baukje Zijlstra said “I didn’t get any specific diagnosis and no medicine, actually I was permitted to be as crazy as I wanted to be. I became a free person. The responsibility now lies in my own hands; it is me who says yes or no” Futher more Baukje Zijlstra has expressed “My motto is, you can only be a good artist if you dare to be honest to yourself. If you dare to feel all the pain and joy life has to offer. In other words, to survive on honest terms. All good artists are actually positive deviants and society needs them badly”.