Ank Landwier - Boonekamp
Ank was born in 1944 in the village of Beek in the Dutch province of Limburg, as the eldest of the Boonekamp family. At school her favourite subject was drawing , and her father, with his artistic skills, stimulated this skill of drawing in her.
For at least ten years since 1970, she had, in the course season, lessons from the well-known Heerlen painter teacher Jean Viehoff, who was attached to the adult education centre in Geleen. In this initial period, she applied herself especially to drawing: perspective drawing, sketching landscapes, still lifes, drawing the human figure and portraits. The material used was charcoal, sanguine, conté, oil colours and pastel. She made moving portraits, which is, no doubt, also due to her strikingly mature capacity to fathom what she sees.
Her versatility created additional value in productions in other fields too. With her hands she has produced splendid wall hangings and carpets, and artistic knitting. She was not averse either to designing and to sewing articles of clothing. With the balanced wealth of colours of a flower garden constantly changing with the seasons, it seemed as if she painted in the reality, achieving the right shades of colour, proportions and perspective.
At the end of 1989 she met Liesbeth Visschers-Gaspers Liesbeth painted icons and had promised her teacher to pass on this art to somebody else. This was to be Ank, who, in her turn, would teach her the knacks of portrait painting. Regrettably, Liesbeth died in 1993 at the age of 63. Via the - at the moment no longer existing - art shop Felix in Maastricht she got into touch with Dick Scholten, a skilful icon and fresco painter, who at the same time has an invaluable factual knowledge of backgrounds and spirituality. Meanwhile they have become good friends and meet every week. In the more than eighteen years that Ank has been painting icons now, she gradually acquired a predilection for old Russian icons. The transparency and simplicity of those icons has a very great appeal for her, and the patience and precision required to achieve this transparency are all the more reasons to occupy herself exactly with this. The preparation of the panels implies the use of traditional methods and is very time-consuming. Yet it is exactly this intensive preparation which makes the creation of icons so particularly valuable, so spiritual. Now that Ank is also teaching herself, the other manifestations of art are limited to drawings for her grandson, unless you also count the culinary art as art.