Series of portraits of homeless people

During my studies at the Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts, I created a series of portraits of homeless people. It is a subject that has touched me for many years.
I notice that homeless people are often seen by society as people on the fringes. As if they are no longer fully seen as human beings. I see things very differently. I see people with a story. People who, for whatever reason, have been damaged by life, but whose purity and humanity are still present.

Over the years, I have had remarkable encounters and conversations with homeless people. Their stories formed the inspiration for this series. With the portraits, I wanted to literally give them a face and a platform.

The series began with detailed portraits, painted with acrylic on paper. I deliberately left parts of the works unfinished, as a reference to lives that do not feel complete or fulfilled. As the series developed, so did my way of working. The portraits became looser, quicker, and more expressive. Markers took the place of paint, and eventually the drawings appeared on newspaper and even on found waste materials.
This development was a conscious choice. Not only did my technique change, but the material also became part of the story. By working on newspapers and waste, I wanted to make visible how homeless people are treated by part of society: as if they are written off or discarded.

The ultimate intention was to place these portraits as paste-ups in public spaces. Not in a gallery, but on the street, among the people. In this way, street art became a means for me to draw attention to humanity, empathy, and the question of how we look at people who have often become invisible.