Open to experience. Unafraid to feel.

Iris Veenendaal is a Dutch contemporary mixed-media artist exploring identity, emotion and the experience of being human. Her work is rooted in curiosity and a willingness to look closer, feel deeply and challenge what is expected of us. Personal experiences, social injustices and the contradictions of everyday life all find their way onto the canvas.

For Iris, making art is a way of engaging with the world. She is drawn to the raw, the imperfect and the unexpected. Her expressive portraits, often depicting women, explore the space between strength and vulnerability, belonging and individuality. Her love of fashion, instinct for colour and interest in the human experience come together in work that is tactile, layered and unapologetically expressive.

Working across spray paint, inks, acrylics and oils, Iris builds her paintings through layers of texture, colour and gesture. Experimentation is central to her process. She embraces the freedom of working with different materials, allowing ideas to evolve and unexpected discoveries to shape the outcome.

At the heart of her practice is a belief in the value of being fully yourself. We spend so much of our lives learning how to fit in, when there is so much to discover in the parts of ourselves that don't. Iris's work invites the viewer to embrace complexity, stay curious and make room for the things that make us feel most alive.

Iris has won international art competitions and was featured in 100 Emerging Artworks of 2023 by the Arts to Hearts Project.