Annette Luycx (pronounced, "Lux") is a Dutch artist and art educator who has been teaching collage, photo-montage and modern and contemporary art history since 2006 in her home studio just outside of Athens, Greece. She also organizes artist residency weeks where she has been coaching artists since 2014.
Annette holds a master's degree in sociology and women's studies from the University of Amsterdam, a postdoctoral degree in cultural management and production from Paris Dauphine University, a master's degree in art education from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), and a certificate in Psychological Astrology (MISPA London).
Annette has spent her life studying and exploring the links between artistic expression and self-discovery in visual arts, dance and theater. She says she is led by her passion for theater and the human soul in her artwork and finds much of her inspiration in personal life experiences, surrealism, fairy tales and nature. Annette uses photo-montage to create emotion-rich portraits and collaged compositions she calls "film-stills". They are handmade with scissors and glue, created with found images and her own photographs, then scanned at a high resolution, and professionally printed on fine art paper. She sells prints of these photomontage portraits on her website.
Annette is the author of From Art to Empowerment: How Women Can Develop Artistic Voice, a hands-on workbook that takes women on an empowering journey of self-discovery through artistic expression.
Meryl Ann Butler: Thanks for visiting with us, Annette. I took several of your workshops online and loved them. Your book is entitled, From Art to Empowerment: How Women Can Develop Artistic Voice --please tell us more...
'From Art to Empowerment: How Women Can Develop Artistic Voice' book cover, Annette (R) and a student in the background.
(Image by Annette Luycx / Iris Art Centre) Details DMCA
Annette Luycx: Thanks for interviewing me!
My workbook is an ideal book for women who love to make art: total newbies, seasoned amateurs and well-stablished artists. As a working method it uses collage and photomontage, ways of art making that are fun and easy, and my specialty. But the method works with any other artistic medium.
MAB: And how do you define "artistic voice"?
AL: "Artistic voice" entails the discovery of a personal visual language where a person's beliefs, life philosophy and self-identity are interwoven with her art. Through my work I encounter women who are insecure and puzzled about life, about themselves. I discovered that letting them surf on their own "inner-net"--which is how I call the journeying through the personal inner world with the help of the imagination-- they discover their own images and start making art that is meaningful to them. By making their inner world visible they get in touch with their inner authenticity and develop personal artistic voice. This whole process is very empowering.
MAB: I love that! Please share a bit about the form that this "empowerment" takes--and why you mostly teach women.
AL: (Laughing) My workbook addresses women in particular because, as only women ever signed up for my classes I started to wonder why only women showed up! I wanted to understand what is it about art that attracts women.
And I discovered that women are socialized to take care of the needs of others to such an extent that they forget who they are and what they want. They may become so fully oriented away from themselves because all their energy is directed towards others that they have no time for themselves.
Most women in my classes were over forty years old, and I guessed that after the about twenty years of working, raising children and caring about everybody around them, women may experience "self-loss". This hinders any real accomplishment on the part of many women and it systematically prevents them from establishing a firm self-identity.
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