BIOGRAPHY:

Maayke Bal is a mother, wife, visual artist and psychotherapist. She has been painting all her life. Dominant topics in both her work as an artist and a therapist are love and attachment, sex and aggression, power, social order and freedom in all respects. A combination of decisiveness and lightness can be found in Maayke’s personality, life and works.

Maayke grew up in a small village in the Netherlands. Due to what she experienced in her private surroundings she became very aware of inner and interpersonal psychological dynamics at an early age.

The relation between the inner, the real self, the basic human nature, natural human needs and drives, versus the outer, the appearances, the social pressure to adjust and (over)adapt should be well balanced or else it leads to problems within or between human beings. Mental illness, hypocrisy and division are well represented in human life.

After studying clinical psychology and later management sciences, Maayke mainly worked in the Dutch prison system, both as a psychologist and prison director. In whatever stage of life or whatever working environment, Maayke’s mission was to fight hypocrisy and division, within or between human beings. The reality of human nature, even if irrational or undesirable, paradoxically has to be acknowledged, for it after that cannot do too much damage.

After some major life events, Maayke started her private practice. She went back to her root profession, intending to continue her mission in a different form. Living more according to some core values also included more freedom to create art.