Maartje de Boer smiling in her paint-splattered apron, standing in front of the wooden wall of her studio.

my story

I’ve loved art for as long as I can remember, but I didn’t start creating until I turned 40.

Until then, I lived mostly in my head, working with numbers, data, logic. But something in me felt hungry. Like my soul wasn’t being fed.

That’s when I found mosaics. My hands, heart, and intuition lit up.

"Creating felt like remembering"

A few years in, I injured my back. No therapy seemed to help. I felt physically broken. Eventually, I began to understand that what was stuck in my body… was also stuck in my heart. I had been holding so much in: unfelt emotions, old fears, stories that didn’t belong to me.

As I started healing emotionally, my body began to soften too. I came back to myself. Slowly, gently, and sometimes messily.

This journey has changed everything. How I live, how I love, and how I create. My art now comes from this deeper place. It’s both my refuge and my mirror.

Through it, I hope to reflect something back to you, too:

That you are already whole. That your pieces belong. That being enough is not something you earn, it’s something you remember.

the hands behind the work

  • Maartje’s hands cutting stone with a hammer and hardie, surrounded by mosaic shards.
  • Maartje holding brightly coloured smalti tiles, her apron flecked with paint and cement.
  • Maartje selecting slabs of marble from studio shelves stacked with mosaic materials.

My work is rooted in self-love, emotion, and the quiet remembering of who we are.

I believe we’re shaped by all we’ve lived, our joy, grief, patterns, and growth. None of it is wasted.
We’re not broken. We’re mosaics: made of many pieces, all of them belonging.

I am a storyteller. My art reflects the emotional landscapes we move through, moments of softness, struggle, and rediscovery. It’s a window into our soul, and into something larger.

I believe everyone has access to that inner power and that we are held by something bigger than us.
A universal energy that connects and carries us, reminding us that we are made of the same stuff as the stars.

In my collages and mosaics, I use color, material, and composition to explore this connection.
They invite us to zoom in, to notice a single moment or feeling. and to zoom out
and remember the whole we’re part of.

I work across disciplines, letting materials guide me: stone, glass, paper, watercolor.
Always assembling, always layering. Like lives, like stories.

I create from a place of deep feeling, and I hope my work offers a space for others to see their own reflection with softness. A small nudge back to wholeness. Back to enoughness.

notes from the journal

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