Leonie Broekstra

Leonie’s image in the style of Vermeer first caught the eye of Elizabeth here when she was looking for an image to submit to the Big Issue in the North.
Intrigued I asked her about it:
‘the image [is one] that I am sending in for Assignment 1 for People and Place. The assignment asks for a variety of portraits and I thought it would be nice to base each portrait on the work of a different artist. It turned out to be a good idea in terms of generating ideas about how I wanted to create the portraits, but most of all a learning curve in how superficially I have always looked at art. With that I mean that my looking at images and paintings never went further than the impression of the colour paletes, a bit of lighting and the subject. My preparation and planning for the shoots and therefore the final images were solely based on these impressions.
It wasn’t until having to look up more information on the craft, personality and the artist’s way of working for my blogging, that I realized I had overlooked a lot of major elements. There were poses I hadn’t considered, lighting set-ups I hadn’t been aware of, ideas behind the images that I hadn’t thought about, etc, etc.
I don’t see the work that I’m handing in as a failure, even though there’s a lot to be said about whether they resemble the artists or not. They are a reflection of how I’ve been learning new skills, a reminder that art asks for further thinking and exploring and that I should do a bit more research and preparation before running off to do a photo shoot!’
Refreshing honesty! In addition to the Hopper influenced image below, there are other images and Leonie’s reflections on the assignment in the learning blog here

In addition to prompting ideas for assignments, producing work in the style of earlier artists can also be used for social, politcal or ironic intent. Those interested might find it worth looking at and researching these works by Jeff Wall, Raeda Saadeh and Peter Blake