Mariejon de Jong-Buijs

Mariejon de Jong-Buijs

*1970 in Waalwijk, The Netherlands

Lives and works in Basel, Switzerland

Dutch artist Mariejon de Jong-Buijs’ process-based work is inspired by the tradition of Dutch landscape painting, a physical inspiration born of her own work experience on farms and a long visual immersion in the history of the genre. Rather than representing the landscape, she aims to reconnect with it through memories. Her paintings are large-scale, often characterized by the use of saturated colors, geometric shapes, repetitive patterns and foldings of the canvas.

Mariejon de Jong-Buijs’ work is an exploration of abstraction juxtaposed with geometric minimalism. She is interested in the ways which paint can be used to create marks, inscriptions, and gestures through the use of non-traditional paint application. Like tractors, back-sprayers, brooms and her body, she utilizes a full range of working tools in and outside the studio. She understands her “painting” as a process for carrying out specific actions to make the vicissitudes of the paint visible. The resulting work on canvas exposes the process, tools, materials and the act of movement. Traces of paint accumulate, residues stick, the elements leaves traces. Her work to date are predicated on an attention to process in relation to unfolding in time, the performance of specific and generally repetitive actions across canvas. Still working within the tradition of the painted canvas, de Jong-Buijs is committed to exploring new ways of taking painting beyond the easel.

Mariejon de Jong-Buijs is living and working in Basel, Switzerland. In 1994 she graduated with a BA in art in The Netherlands and completed her MFA at the FHNW/HGK (Institute Art Gender Nature) Basel in 2015. In 2019 de Jong-Buijs participated in the Immigrant Artist Program at the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her project iExist, was accepted in the Fiscal Sponsorship Program at the New York Foundation for the Arts in New York. Her work has been shown widely nationally and internationally, including at the Kunsthalle Basel, FABRIKculture Hégenheim, Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton NJ, The Clemente, New York City, Brick + Mortar Gallery, Easton PA, FRAC Alsace, Sélestat, Kunstmuseum Olten, Kunshaus Baselland, Ballroom Gallery, Brussels Belgium and Lille Grand Palais, Lille.