For viewing you can come to Hotel Joli in Bergen NH, visit Restaurant Studlers in Bergen NH, or visit my studio by appointment. If you are interested in buying a painting, please contact me by email:
Period 1: 2002 - 2007 realistic oil paintings
My work as an autonomous and self-taught artist began in January 2002 with a dream. We had just moved and after the birth of our second child, I was not feeling very well. I yearned to listen more to my heart and one day I decided to quit my regular job at a logistics consulting firm and follow my feelings.... One of the first nights, just after I quit, I had a lucid dream. I dreamed that I was painting and in the dream I was born again. I woke up and thought: painting!
Painting was the spatial step I took to reshape my life and it changed my life. A new door opened. In the living room, among the children playing, I began to paint with oils on linen. Often I went into nature, together with the children, or alone. In nature I found the peace, tranquility and inspiration I was looking for.
Niels, my beloved husband, helped me stretch the linen so I could make the desired size for every painting. A few months after I started Niels made a small studio for me in our shed, there I could work in silence. In this studio and outside in nature, I made most of the oil paintings of this period.
Copyright voor mijn schilderijen is wereldwijd geregistreerd bij U.S. Copyright Office
Realistische en abstracte Kunst van Marieke Krista Engelbregt
Period 2 until 2011-12: Energy flows
I had made a habit of meditating for a moment in the evening before going to bed. That way I learned to let go of the day and fall asleep wonderfully. One evening in October (2005), while meditating, I received a call from a woman. Her energy image emerged clearly and she invited me to seek her out. There was not a moment of doubt in me. That very night I decided to go looking for her.
It took several months before I actually traveled with a friend and after an extraordinary search I found her. She was a Tibetan Buddhist nun in Nepal, Kathmandu. The encounter touched me in the depths of my being. A white-gold glow passed through my body, permeating and enveloping everything. A completely new experience of my emotional world and my perception into the Divine essence of Light opened up.
Slowly, this renewal began to integrate into my daily life ... and I began to express my feelings in a different way through painting. This brought me again and again into deep silence, peace. I no longer felt so attached to external realistic forms. I wanted this period to paint directly from my feelings what I was experiencing internally at a deeper level. I became more detached from thinking.... I began to paint the first intuitive paintings with oil paint, but became hypersensitive to the solvents of oil paint and that made me switch to acrylic paint. The abstract forms allowed me to merge harmoniously with the flow.
During this period, I got to know my fully realized Yoga Master Prema Baba Swamiji. Through His reaching hand I was able to further develop and deepen my connection with the Light and the Divine. This period thereby brought the space to the forefront of the possibilities, the expansion that we as humans can experience in the essence of Light. How matter can start to move and resonate and how that brings the inner movement into our bodies.
When we gain spiritual insights and grow inwardly, the body also moves to a higher energy level, which sometimes causes over-stimulation and requires temporary adjustments in, for example, nutrition due to sensitive digestion. Sometimes old layers of emotions were released, which I had to process. Step by step the inner fire of cellular burning grew to a higher level, and then everything came back into balance. This does not always happen automatically. Again and again it was a search and a discovery....
There were also times when I struggled to understand how we live, as if we were, "trapped in illusion on Earth".... But through meditation I began to experience that my roots became deeper, as if I began to grow like a tree, with solid full branches. But still sometimes I felt overwhelmed by emotions, by the violence in this world, by sadness and fear.
As a child, I loved to play outside. I preferred to sit in the old chestnut tree near our house, where no one could see me. Now I began to connect intuitively with trees again, to meditate by trees or climb on a low branch and become totally absorbed in the feeling of the tree and experience peace. I meditate often in nature, there I feel space to really turn deeper inward and analyze my thoughts and allow deeper transformations. For me, it was (and is) a way to allow the unconditional power, beauty and energy of nature to help me deal with the pressures of daily life, to turn inside and feel peace. I painted the painting shown below in 2010 to express all these feelings (1.22 x1.54m).
The painting has two sides: on one side my feelings and thoughts speak about the flow of creation, about sexuality, receiving and letting go, earthly matter, the duality between masculine and feminine; and on the other side I depict my strengths to stand tall and experience being like a tree. In the radiant Light of the Sun my roots grow deeper and deeper. Just as long and deep until I experience the nurturing of the Earth and can perceive, forgive and accept. In this deep cherishing moment, cosmic consciousness opens, emotions disappear like snow for the Sun and duality comes to oneness, to the unity of Light and Love.
Copyright for my paintings is registered worldwide with U.S. Copyright Office
Realistische en abstracte Kunst van Marieke Krista Engelbregt
Period 3 until 2017 Ananda, Inner Light and Happiness
The children grew older and there was more and more space to paint. My paintings grew along with my experience of Light, and I received inspirations to express my experiences of energy in new ways. Although Prema Baba was mostly in the background during this period, His energy, and the insights I had received from Him, continued to play a major role for me and my paintings. Free abstract expression allowed me to express the inner joy I felt, for which there are no words. The paintings pictured at this time are part of the Ananda series, which means "greatest joy," or "Bliss".
The energy patterns in points and colors represent movements and feelings of expansion. I experienced a deepening in looking at myself, at the world. I began to experience more deeply the connection of oneness between inner and outer and with that the inner flows and power of movement in waves of energy.
The painting below is called "Inexhaustible Source."
The painting is from 2014 and, like all my paintings, I made it freehand.
It is 1.22m wide and 1.19m high.
During this period, after a vision at Lake Siskiyou in Mount Shasta, I also got to know Mother Amma. Mata Amritananda Mayi Devi. Mother Amma, with her great compassion and example, helped me in my spiritual process of forgiveness, learn to turn deeper inward, resolving old emotions, and She revived the fire in my digestion.
My yoga master Prema Baba keeps close on the background, everything I learned from Him is internalizing and deepening. I am beginning to perceive a deeper divine connection and perceive the cosmic layers in energy, color and radiance more clearly. In the series below I gave expression to the initiations I received from Him about eight to ten years before.
Copyright voor mijn schilderijen is wereldwijd geregistreerd bij U.S. Copyright Office
Period 4 until 2020: The forces of nature
Over the years I also continued to paint seas, water and trees. The colors, as I experience and render them in my abstract work penetrate in these paintings to the core of experiencing unity, the ultimate experience of Light. In meditation and in nature, I find this again and again. I recognize patterns when I am in nature, and experience a softness, a subtlety, in which my body merges into the resonance of nature.
During this period, I began to more deeply integrate the serenity and realistic delicate energies, as expressions of the earth and nature, into my abstract work. I also began to experience again the inner urge to exhibit my work. Step by step, I retrieved the paintings of periods 2, 3 and 4 from storage to prepare them for exhibition. After the release of my book "Sea of Light" my work is again hanging at various exhibitions and can be viewed in my studio by appointment.
Below you can see some of my work from the two series: "The Spirit of Water" and "The Earthly Elements".
Series: The Spirit of Water
In water I find the great flow of energy, like an open clarity, a surging, intuitive flow. When I tune in, I feel in this natural flow the inner strength, the Light and silence, the nourishing Source. From this inspiration, feeling and inner experience formed these new paintings.
Sometimes I paint and don't yet know what emerges. If I look later I see recognizable patterns of flowing water, waves of the sea, roots of trees, flowers, or tree trunks, for example. I then work these out and deepen my perception of feeling in the painting. This gives each painting its own character, appearance and form.
Series: The Eartlhy Elements
Copyright for my paintings is registered worldwide with U.S. Copyright Office
Expositions
During the years I have exhibited in many places. In addition, my studio is open by appointment.
Exhibition venues:
Restaurant Onder de Linde in Bergen, Restaurant Studlers in Bergen, Hotel Breeburgh in Bergen, Hotel Joli in Bergen, Great Ursula Church Warmenhuizen, Old People's Home the Marke in Bergen, Atelier Dorpsstraat 13 in Bergen, Church in Groet, The Berkeley in Bergen (then called the Wijde Nes), Art Center in the old fire station in Bergen, Van Reenenschool Bergen, Atelier Hallstein Nes 19 in Bergen.
Below is an impression.
White Church in Groet
Bergen Arts Center, in the old Fire Station
In the old building of the current Berkeley on Nesdijk Bergen
Realistische en abstracte Kunst van Marieke Krista Engelbregt