Nathan van Lemel

Nathan van Lemel loves tinkering away in his sketchbooks all day, bringing all his crazy ideas to life: from masked, dancing human figures and other strange creatures and beasts to expressions of frustration in the form of angry texts or distorted faces. He jumps from one subject to another like this. His style also varies from time to time — alongside a lot of cartoonish work, there are occasionally more realistic images too. And sometimes the drawings take on a life of their own, resulting in something he couldn't even have imagined beforehand!

Having wrestled with expectations himself and sometimes taken things a bit too seriously, freedom in making art has become very important to Nathan. It doesn't all have to be so serious, logical, or even "good." And it doesn't all necessarily have to have a deeper meaning. That's why, for his finals, he has set up a space filled with all sorts of things, where you can wander around among all the sketchbook pages and small nonsensical details. He hopes that after seeing his work, you might feel like making something crazy too!

After the academy, Nathan would like to continue making various things: zines and small booklets, stickers, standalone works suitable for posters or prints, and maybe an album cover someday. He'd also really love to turn one or more of his sketchbooks into publishable books at some point!