The initial photographs from which each of these series of paintings was made are not formally set up – the elements contained are not arranged to create the kind of compositional harmony that we would traditionally expect to see in portraiture and still-life. Instead, they are off-center, cropped, unbalanced at times. They celebrate the mundane, the everyday, the way in which life happens un-staged all around us; they sublimate these moments into something timeless and eternal by way of oil paint. Flooded Playground, for instance, is an apt example: “The photograph I took was not of a happy playground full of children playing, but of a flooded and empty playground after a storm,” Schoorel says.

This work was previously featured in the exhibitions:
Maaike Schoorel, "Flooded Playground" Exhibition – New York, Apr 26 2024 to May 25 2024