Women with Green Arm

Marius van Niekerk, Portugal

Marius is an artist working in the film & arts industry as writer, director, producer, cinematographer and visual-painting artist, worked as trauma-art counsellor/facilitator, with war refugees/veterans families, lecturer and published the autobiographic book “BEHIND THE LINES OF THE MIND-healing the mental scars of war” in 2009. "My work often inspired by childhood and war experience, centres around a central theme “the human dilemma/human stain”. Strained compositions of abstract-expressionistic, sometimes more figurative images driven vividly, suggest the burden of violence, a search for identity and initiation, the strain of paint on untreated canvas and raw paper, in a bright pallet of sometimes runny, distorted forms and colours layered, contrasted with sometimes straight, more harmonious forms and colours, reinforced by a powerful image-message and misplaced energy. I sometimes use my films and photographs to drive further video-images in dark room projections, in combination with supporting painting and sound, isolated, binding close-up-feeling-seeing-experience”… We, as artist must, a mirror to society, have a responsibility, in all we do, to constantly work against oppression, discrimination and war.