From the Mere

About me

Over twenty years ago, I began my artistic journey with collage art. Since then, I haven’t stopped exploring new techniques and creative expressions. Today, my work focuses primarily on mixed media, painting, collage, and graphite pencil. My practice thrives on variety: I love combining materials and methods to create a rich, tactile experience with a truly hand crafted feel, art that invites you to slow down, reach out, and touch.

Having a background in Social Work, I developed a deep, firsthand understanding of human vulnerability. That experience formed the foundation for the core theme in my work: Restoration.

Under the name From the Mere, I exhibit my work, sell smaller pieces through stockists, and teach several art classes.

Sjoukje Leeverink

**Star Collector**
Acrylic on canvas, 2026

Why I create

Art can be smart, beautiful, skillful or creative. Yes. Please! We need that in this world.

But I also long for my art to quietly carry a message about finding value in ourselves and other, despite this messy world we live in. How stumbling through life, feeling overwhelmed, small, old or broken doesn’t devalue us, but adds lived-through depth to our story.

This idea is so deeply embedded in me that it shapes the way I create. Sometimes directly through the image or message, but more often through my choice of style, atmosphere or materials. I love hunting for materials with a history. Things that are old, worn, broken or discarded. And giving them new value as part of my art.

Current:

Cabinet of curiosities

Recently, I visited the Kunstcaemer in the Rembrandt House Museum. I love collecting beautiful things, to enjoy, to use as reference for my art, or to incorporate into an artwork. So I felt right at home in Rembrandt’s art room. It’s so special to find inspiration not in digital photos or devices, but in physical objects you can touch, experience, and study. In Dutch, this is called a rariteitenkabinet, a place for the odd and uncommon.

I brought that Wunderkammer feeling into this series of miniatures. By painting animals and nature motifs with an old-fashioned portrait feel and pairing them with hand-poured classic frames, I am creating my own painted cabinet of curiosities: a collection where anything and everything is welcome.

Underlying this series is that exact message: showing that what is “different”, “old”, or “strange” is actually something to be treasured deeply.

Mixed media with acrylics and porcelain plaster

Current:

Reclaimed Character

As much as I love the intricacy of miniature painting, it is also a breath of fresh air to use a more playful brush style on these wood blocks.

Animals are some of my favorite subjects. I love to mess around with colors and layers, using bold brushstrokes and glazing to create depth in their fur, combined with a bit of detailed work to give each of them their own character.

The blocks themselves are made from reclaimed wood: discarded furniture, manufacturing seconds, and offcuts from a local sawmill. Letting the natural grain peek through the paint gives these forgotten pieces of timber a new life, right alongside the animals painted on them.

Available at VAKwerk Burgum