Femke Rutgers

This Place

Femke Rutgers creates work based on her imagination, feeling, and a childlike sense of wonder. It's an open, unfiltered way of looking at the world. Everything is possible; nothing is strange. A beetle has heels. A stone is a friend. She believes we should keep playing, discovering, inventing, and dressing up, even when we're grown up, especially when we're grown up.

She specialises in writing and illustrating picture books. She often starts with something small: a thought, a feeling, or something that inspires her from her own life. Her illustrations are created using various techniques, such as oil paint, collage, watercolour, gouache, and tetra printing.

Her latest book, This Place (with a text by fellow student Kim Dijkstra), is about wandering, daydreaming, and wonder. About a place where everything is soft. Where you go when you cycle past blossoming trees in spring, or take a stroll when everything becomes too much. A place that smells of moss and wet grass, indescribable and entirely yours.

Femke also shows the visualisation of her thesis, a short film, "The Story Machine." Feel free to take a seat on the birch tree chair, where you can also view all her previous books.