Dorien Plaat is a self-educated painter. She was born of Dutch parents in Kumasi (Ghana). She spent her childhood years in countries like Venezuela and Sri Lanka. Later, when she had grown up, she lived in Tanzania, Nigeria and Vietnam after which she took up permanent residence in the Netherlands.
Being influenced by the various cultures of these countries she developed into the painter she is now: a talented portrait painter working in a figurative style, who handles her brushes with compassion. Especially the loneliness and fragility of her figures; she manages to portray these feelings eminently.
What is the essence of visual art? This is a question which numerous artists often, sometimes daily ask themselves. There are many possible answers. Dorien Plaat found hers in a poem by the Brazilian Drummond de Andrade, entitled 'Smaller Life'.
"Neither the lifeless,
nor the everlasting or the divine,
only the living,
the extremely small, silent, stolid
and lonely living.
That is what I seek."
