Beyond the Canvas: A Conversation with Lauren Clancy

Lauren Clancy’s art doesn’t just hang on a wall; it lives, breathes, and often aches. Her mixed-media paintings, rich with the tactile presence of newspaper fragments, raw color, and layered textures, feel less like compositions and more like archaeological digs into the human spirit. They are visceral landscapes where memory, grief, and resilience bleed through, inviting viewers to confront the chaos of existence and find a surprising sense of release.

In this candid interview, Clancy pulls back the curtain on her deeply personal process. She speaks with an unvarnished honesty about navigating life’s tumultuous fires—illness, loss, and profound betrayals—and how these experiences forge the very essence of her work. This isn’t art created for external validation but rather born from an intrinsic compulsion—a sacred act of survival and self-discovery. As we delve into her unique relationship with language, her journey through multiple creative disciplines, and her unwavering commitment to truth, it becomes clear that Clancy’s art is not merely biographical; it’s a resonant vibration, a raw testament to the human condition that calls us to feel “something”—discomfort, recognition, release, or perhaps, all of it at once.

AMM: Your work feels like it’s been torn straight from the soul—fragments of newspaper, color, memory, grief. When you’re creating, are you trying to make sense of the chaos or just survive it?

LJC: I create when I’m compelled, when something in my soul needs to be made tangible. I don’t always know what I want to make, or how it will turn out. Sometimes I wrestle with my own inner ego. Will this work? Will it make sense in the end? I am my own worst critic. The inner turmoil I’ve experienced through painting is something I’ve had to both relinquish and reckon with in order to keep pushing forward. I’ve had to move past my own boundaries and keep creating anyway.

And then, at some point, I remember… there’s almost no need for all that doubt. It always comes together in some way. And if it doesn’t, you just paint over it. That’s the beauty of painting.

My life outside the studio is often very structured. It’s busy, fast-paced, and full. But when I step into the studio, it’s like I can finally breathe. I put on music, let go, and just pour it all out. That space becomes sacred. It’s meditative. It’s freeing. Sometimes it feels like mindlessness. Other times, it feels like survival.

All my life, I never made art to show other people or to sell. I only began sharing it within this past year, after reaching a turning point in my life and really just gathering the courage to. But even now, I’ll always strive to create from that original place, making what I’m compelled to make, not what I think people want to see or what might sell.

We live in a world where coercion is commonplace, where people compromise themselves in nearly every facet. I witnessed that deeply during COVID. And while it may be controversial to say, it marked something in me. My integrity, my truth, and honoring myself will always mean more to me than being liked, praised, or profitable. If that doesn’t resonate with galleries or collectors or anyone else… so be it. I’ll still keep making my art, the way I need to.

I’m a truth seeker. In my life and in my work, I go to the deepest depths, through grief, memory, excavation, and intuition, in order to reach the truth of something. I refuse to compromise. For me, it’s almost: give me truth or give me death. That’s how vital it feels.

AMM: You’ve lived through fire: illness, loss, rebirth—how do you keep the canvas from becoming therapy, and instead make it art that sings with something bigger than biography?

LJC: I’m not sure a canvas shouldn’t be therapy… or biography, for that matter. Why not let it be both? For me, painting is about capturing the essence of a moment, an emotion, a lived experience. It’s like a snapshot of the soul. There’s something deeply beautiful about honoring that.

When I was diagnosed at age 30 with stage 3A Hodgkin’s lymphoma, I felt like my life was shattered. Everything I thought I knew had to be picked up, re-examined, and rearranged into something new… something that made sense in the aftermath. I’ve had the rug ripped out from under me more times than I can count, especially in love, betrayal, and loss. But I’ve also experienced moments of immense bliss, joy, and spiritual connection.

For every depth of agony I’ve walked through, I’ve also touched the highest of highs. I feel fortunate to have lived a rich emotional experience… and if I’m being honest, I’m grateful for all of it. It’s shaped who I am as a woman, and as an artist.

I’m the antithesis of complacent in life. always in motion, always evolving, always peeling back new layers. I believe this pursuit is essential for my soul, because I’m always seeking to reach my highest self. I invest in my own growth, spiritually, emotionally, creatively, because I believe that’s where my best work comes from.

How do I know when the art has transcended the personal? I think it goes back to what I said earlier… something else just takes over. It’s no longer about me. It’s like the spirit within me moves, and suddenly what was once mine alone becomes something more. Something universal. Something meant to be shared.

I had a period of years after cancer where, in retrospect, I was dimming my own light. I held myself back with a certain restraint. I didn’t want others to feel envious of anything I was doing, whether perceived or real. I’m very conscious of energy, and I felt I needed to safeguard my own and any energy being negatively directed toward me. That much hasn’t changed, although I’ve learned better tools for handling and protecting myself. And while I live a beautiful life, I used to worry that fully stepping into it might “be too much.” 

I also had a few scary experiences, two stalkers actually, that left a real imprint on me. But it wasn’t just them. I think it was also the trauma of cancer, and the heartbreak, and the betrayals from people I gave my whole heart to. Over time, I just didn’t feel safe… physically, emotionally, spiritually. I began unconsciously pulling back. In my younger years, I was more apt to live openly, to stand in the spotlight with a kind of raw, naïve trust in the world. But slowly, through those circumstances, I became shelled.

It took time to recognize that. To reconcile with it. But once I did, and I’m still on my journey with it, I began to find my way back. Not all at once… but slowly, and fully. And now, I believe that the more I allow myself to shine… to live in love, to be authentically and unapologetically myself… maybe others will be inspired to step into their own divine light with more warranted authority. And that’s the kind of light I want to send into the world.

AMM: Words show up in your paintings like ghosts—cut-out, buried, resurfacing. What’s your relationship to language now: is it your weapon, your anchor, your witness?

LJC: I’ve always had a fascination with books. I almost always have one with me, and I buy more than I could ever read in my very little spare time. In middle school, I used to walk around with an electronic dictionary… just because I loved learning new words. My father was an editor of a newspaper, and I have these vivid memories of newspapers scattered all over our house. I didn’t like them at the time, but now I see them as oddly comforting… an imprint of a certain time, of who we were.

Sometimes it makes me sad that newspapers and print are nearly extinct and being replaced by digital. I long for the tangible feeling of a crisp newspaper, a book. I still handwrite my own calendar. I just don’t think I’ll ever change in this digital world.

I love literature. I almost majored in it. I love expanding my vocabulary. It might sound a little dorky to say that, but it’s one of my passions. Words have always helped me make sense of the world. The more language we have, the more clearly we can express how we feel. And I believe that’s everything. Communication is everything.

As an ode to my past, and as a way to capture time itself, I often incorporate newspaper into my work. Not in every piece, but often. Even when the text isn’t fully visible, there’s something powerful in knowing it’s there. It’s like a quiet time capsule… subtle or sometimes not so subtle… but always present.

So yes, I would say language is my weapon, my anchor, and my witness. It doesn’t move quietly through my work. It’s potent, direct, and visceral… just like it is in my life.

AMM: You move between disciplines—acting, writing, painting—as if they’re all limbs of the same beast. What does each form give you that the others can’t?

LJC: I never really used the word “artist” to describe myself, which is kind of ironic considering how much of my life has been shaped by creative expression. Maybe it’s because I studied business in college, or maybe it’s the strong entrepreneurial side of me that kept me leaning into other kinds of pursuits. I’ve always been creative, but I often channeled that creativity into building things… businesses, ideas, stories, solutions. Business has always been grounding for me. It’s given me a sense of stability and structure, a kind of safety that allowed other parts of me to flourish. And while the business world doesn’t always feel fluid or soulful, creating my own company was, in its own way, an artistic act. I approached it with vision and imagination. I built it from the ground up using my creativity… just through a different medium.

Introspectively, perhaps I never used the word “artist” because, deep down, I didn’t feel worthy of it. To me, it’s always felt like an esteemed word. Noble, even. And for a long time, I wasn’t sure I had earned that kind of title. That says more about my own inner barriers than anything else, but it’s true. I had to grow into the courage to claim it. To realize that being an artist isn’t about permission. It’s about truth.

Since I was little, I’ve been dancing, writing, painting, performing… it’s always been part of me. Not something I took on, but something I came in with. These disciplines have moved through my life like different languages I’ve learned to speak. Sometimes all at once. Sometimes one louder than the others. But always there.

As an adolescent, I never thought I was any more talented than anyone else. I didn’t see myself as particularly gifted. I just figured everyone danced, everyone painted, everyone wrote. It wasn’t until later, looking back from a place of more self-awareness, that I realized how fortunate I am to have these abilities. I’ve come to appreciate how much these forms have shaped me and how naturally they’ve always flowed. It feels silly in hindsight, but for so long, I didn’t differentiate myself. I didn’t name what was special. My inner world is a very humbled one, possibly to my detriment. 

For most of my life, I would make art and just put it away. I have pieces still sitting in my parents’ garage, buried in bins and corners. Even with the pieces I kept near me, I’d often finish them and slide them into a closet, then forget about them entirely. Creating was instinctual, but it was also deeply private… almost like a personal ritual. I didn’t really want anyone to see it. For a long time, that part of me felt too intimate to share. Most of my family knew, but many of my friends—even people I was close with, had no idea I made art at all. I didn’t make it to show… I made it because I had to.

But one day, while I was moving, I laid out around sixteen of my paintings across the floor. And for the first time, I really saw them. I saw the story. I saw the pain. I saw the evolution. And I felt something shift.

I took a few photos. And then I remembered… I had just met a photographer. I thought, maybe he can come over and snap a few professional ones before I put them away. I started writing down their names on a piece of paper. Scribbled their dimensions in the margins. It was nothing formal, nothing planned… just a quiet, almost mundane moment that felt strangely important. Like I was preserving something without quite knowing why.

Art Basel and Miami Art Week were swiftly approaching, and that inner nudge got louder. Submit. But it wasn’t just about showing the work. It felt spiritual. I was deep into a Sanskrit mantra practice, calling in higher alignment, trying to elevate my life. And something opened in me. A deeper passion. A sense of readiness that hadn’t been there before.

Until then, I hadn’t felt safe exposing that part of myself. I hadn’t wanted to bare my soul in that way. I worried… would anyone like it? Would I be judged? Would they laugh my work off the wall? I wrestled with that for years. But when I finally did show my work, it was received with such warmth and depth that I knew… I had to keep going.

Dance brings me into bliss, into presence, into spirit. Writing helps me make meaning… I’ve written poems, stories, essays, journals for as long as I can remember. And now, I’m in the process of writing a memoir, which has become a way to reclaim and reframe some of the most pivotal moments of my life.

Acting taught me emotional honesty and deep listening. Yoga brought me into a relationship with breath, stillness, and subtlety. These forms aren’t separate chapters in my life. They’re different expressions of the same essence.

So no, I didn’t always call myself an artist. And maybe the label doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s in me. And I’m honored if others see it too.

AMM: When someone stands in front of your work—raw texture, emotion bleeding through—what do you want them to feel first: discomfort, recognition, release… or all of it at once?

LJC: Honestly, what matters most to me when someone stands in front of my work is that they feel “something.” That maybe they take a pause. Maybe they lean in a little closer. Maybe they see something in it that evokes a feeling or reminds them of a memory. That they find their own meaning in it.

I keep coming back to the word resonance, because that’s what I hope for…a vibration, a moment of recognition. The humanness of that, that connection through feeling, is what ties us all together.

I don’t paint with a fixed outcome in mind. Some pieces come from personal emotion, others from what’s happening in the world; politically, socially, or culturally. And sometimes it’s all of that at once. Through my use of newspaper clippings and other found materials, I try to reflect what’s unfolding around me in real time.

Some works, like Hidden Love, arrive with clarity. I saw that one in its entirety before I even began and had to build the puzzle pieces, quite literally, to match that vision. But more often, I start with a feeling or a fragment and let myself be guided. I pause, revisit, shift direction. The process is rarely linear.

And when I finish a piece, I sometimes step back and think, How did I even make that? It’s like I get so immersed that it just becomes what it needs to be. I’m not sure I could recreate some of them if I tried.

I think what I’m most drawn to in both making and sharing the work is the space it creates for someone else to enter. A woman once told me that my piece Narcissist reminded her of riding the subway in the Bronx as a child. It had nothing to do with my intention, but it became hers, and I loved that. That’s what art should do: create room for others to see themselves in it, in whatever way they need.

In Search of Stanley Brouwn

With the sad news of Stanley Brouwn’s passing, aged 81, we revisit our feature on the elusive artist

BY Oscar van den Boogaard in Features | 12 MAR 14

He never shows up at openings; there are very few catalogues that include images of his work, let alone his portrait. True to the spirit of 1960s conceptualism, his work is about dematerialization, the impersonal as part of the creative process and the disappearance of the author. Where is Stanley Brouwn?

During the writing of this essay, everyone I ask to put me in touch with him – gallerists, collectors, artist friends – also suddenly seems to vanish into thin air, as though they too are accomplices in the great disappearing act that ensures the artist stays invisible, so that the work can remain abstract and unburdened with what is irrelevant: its mortal maker.

The extraordinary thing is that, as I look for Brouwn, I catch myself out: I discover I don’t really want to find out who he is. This realization comes from a deep respect for his artistic choice to remain invisible and from a reverence for the concept of privacy in general that, nowadays, is being so forcefully eroded. Privacy is disappearing from our world not only because governments, corporations and citizens are so unabashedly nosy, but because individuals – in the age of Facebook, Instagram and soul-bearing television talk shows – no longer seem to feel the need for privacy. For many in the 21st century, privacy is regarded as a terrifying prison in which you are forced to wallow in your own solitude. Privacy is seen as a form of non-existence. We display ourselves to others and do not wish for one moment to be lost from view, to be alone for an instant.

Not so Stanley Brouwn: he is the man who wishes to remain invisible. And yet, thanks to the few details that are known about him, he has attained an almost mythical status. He was born in 1935 in Paramaribo, the capital of Suriname. The smallest country in South America, Suriname lies on the continent’s north-eastern Atlantic coast, between Guyana, French Guiana and Brazil.

Coincidentally, I grew up in Suriname during the second half of the 1960s. To me, in retrospect, it is a paradise. Four times larger than the Netherlands, of which it is a former colony, it consists mainly of Amazon rainforest and has barely half a million inhabitants. Until its inde­pend­ence in 1975, the country’s flag displayed five stars connected by an ellipse. The stars represented the various ethnic groups that were supposedly peacefully coexisting there. As I recall it, the yellow star symbolized the Chinese, the brown star the Hindus, the red star the indigenous population and the black one the Creole people. ‘Oscar,’ my black nanny would ask me, ‘what is the white star for?’ And my answer would be forthright: ‘White is for the people.’ Like all other colonies, of course, Suriname was governed by white oppressors.

Candide, the central character in Voltaire’s eponymous novella, visits Suriname during the enlightenment. ‘We have arrived at the end of our difficulties and the beginning of our happiness!’ Candide’s valet, Cacambo, cries out when he catches his first glimpse of Suriname. Close to Paramaribo, Candide sees a black man lying on the ground; the poor man is missing a left leg and a right hand. ‘Oh God!’ Candide says to him in Dutch. ‘What are you doing there, little friend, in that terrible state?’ ‘I am waiting here for my master,’ the man answers. ‘Is he the one who has done this to you?’ Candide asks. ‘Yes, sir,’ says the man, ‘It is the custom …’ Candide breaks down as he contemplates his pitiful state. He relinquishes his optimism and enters Suriname in tears.

According to his scant biography, Brouwn came to Amsterdam from Suriname in 1957. His fellow artist friend Armando introduced him to the Zero movement, a group of artists who rejected the evident authorial signature. Brouwn’s first works, dating from that time, which he later destroyed, were transparent polythene bags filled with all sorts of rubbish and hung from the ceiling. The work consisted of the visible content of the bag and nothing else. The pieces he actually considers to be his first works were ones he didn’t make himself: instead, he laid paper sheets on the street and an unsuspecting cyclist or pedestrian created the art work as they cycled or walked over them. Without realizing it, the passers-by became anonymous partners in these works capturing movement and time. Through participation, Brouwn placed the act of creation into the hands of others and subsequently erased, in a certain sense, his own artisthood.

Later, in the early 1960s, Brouwn would approach random pedestrians and ask them to draw directions to a particular place on a piece of paper. Using a stamp that said ‘This way Brouwn’ he would then imprint each drawing with its hallmark, like an eager neurotic bureaucrat, creating works that were simultaneously personal and abstract. Blank pages on which passers-by hadn’t drawn anything because they didn’t know the way were also considered art works, since Brouwn felt the whiteness precisely captured the participants’ abstract thought processes. The traces of footsteps and the directions on the ‘This way Brouwn’ works may well have been the starting point for the artist’s fascination with walking.

Walking is a way of becoming unstuck from yourself, of merging with your environment: the boundary between yourself and the environ­ment is relinquished. A cosmic unity is restored. It is about a dematerialization of the self, disso­lu­tion into space, becoming part of the geography. In the meantime, you shape something new; you become movement, measure, scale, direction, dimension and space. The obsession with precision leads further away from the self. From the 1970s onwards, like a nerdy rambler gone adrift, Brouwn recorded his own footsteps in various cities on index cards that he then stored in grey metal filing cabinets. In these works, personal experience becomes objectified and the subject dissolves. Autobiography is measured, quantified and made impersonal. You could call it a form of subli­mation. From the moment he first made those pieces, the artist’s own absence has been a distinguishing element in his work.

‘To dazzle by absence’ is a Dutch expression. It means that by being absent, you are all the more present. Does this apply to Brouwn? Or to his contemporary On Kawara, perhaps, who never makes public appearances and who communicates with the world via telegrams and postcards? However, whereas Kawara uses his own life as subject matter in his messages, such as ‘I am still alive’, Brouwn never adopts the first person in his work.

I am doing something that I really shouldn’t. On the-artists.org, a website dedicated to artists working since 1900, we can find a simple black and white passport-sized photograph of Brouwn. It is 444 × 595 pixels. For an artist who does not want photographs of himself or his works to be published, this is at the very least a provocation. We do not see much of him: the overexposed face of a balding man. From his features you can deduce that he is a Surinamer, probably belonging to the brown or black star of the flag. On the photograph, he is not so much pale as blank. He is wearing glasses and sports a thick, black moustache. He appears to be looking up, his gaze focused on infinite space beyond the camera. The pixels part and emptiness sets in.

In Wim Beeren’s book Action, Reality and Fiction in the Art of the 1960s in The Netherlands (1979), despite my best intentions, I discover a couple more photographs of the artist. We can see Brouwn during the enactment of a work from the ‘This way Brouwn’ series in Amsterdam in 1961. The slim artist looks on, with his hands in the pockets of his long, light raincoat, as a man in a suit scribbles on a piece of paper. In another photograph, we see Brouwn standing in front of a shoe shop window. A few women’s shoes can be made out in the shop window behind his right shoulder. It becomes clear that the first portrait was a crop of this image.

In catalogues for group exhibitions in which the artist participates, he is also consistently absent and his contribution is only ever a blank page. What could that blankness mean? A blank is something that is empty, something not filled in. Blank can mean everything and it can mean nothing at the same time. Blankness can stand for infinity, for every possibility. Blankness leaves everything open and admits everything. Blankness also stands for a refusal to speak. That which could be detrimental to meaning is left unsaid. It is the choice of not choosing: a precise way of saying that which is inexplicable and transcends language.

In the same book, I find another photograph of Brouwn, dated August 1964. The artist is standing in the window of an antiques shop, where Gallery Amstel was located. An anonymous per­for­mance by Brouwn is taking place there, on a Saturday. He uses objects that are to hand. Wearing a raincoat and a bag over his head, Brouwn steps onto the table. As he covers his head and chest with newspapers, he holds up wads of paper against the shop window. He takes off his shoes and lays them on the table. He picks up an axe and uses it to make chopping movements in the direction of one of the shoes. Clutching newspapers under his arms, he presses the shoe up to his left ear.

Here is another photograph with rounded edges. It has the shape of an old television screen. It’s taken from the Dutch art television programme Signalement from 29 December 1963. We see Brouwn during View of a City in 24 Hours (1963). The accompanying description says he laid sheets of paper on the street before returning later to collect the ‘trodden on’ pages.

In addition to these photographs we have an account. In 1964, at the Patio Gallery in Neu-Isenburg, an art happening took place in which Brouwn wore a bag over his head and sat still on a chair that he had put on a pedestal in the corner of the gallery. Is a man with a bag on his head a man without a face? He is, in any case, an artist on a pedestal. He is presently absent.

I am reminded of the Chinese parable that the German philosopher Rüdiger Safranski describes in Wieviel Wahrheit braucht der Mensch? (How Much Truth Do We Need?, 1990). It is about an artist who disappears into his own painting. Devoting himself for years to a single work, the painter has grown old and lonely. When the work is finally finished, he invites the few friends he still has to see it. They gather around the painting, which depicts a park and a narrow road leading to a house on a hill. Just as the guests have formed their opinions about the work and turn to share them with the painter, they realize he is no longer there. They look at the painting and see him walking up the road towards the house and opening the door; he turns around one more time, takes leave of his friends and goes inside, closing the door behind him. Such an act of introversion signifies separating yourself from the others. For those who stay behind, that disappearance is a kind of death. Yet, as conveyed by Safranski, this story says something about a homecoming of sorts, an arrival. Because the tale is told from the perspective of those who are left behind, there is no language for the joy of homecoming. At most you can say: look, in this painting you can find the language of happiness. It is, of course, a very romantic image. I don’t know if Brouwn is preoccupied with happiness. His work is still about being and not being. He disappears into his work. He disappears into space. But he doesn’t want to dissolve alone. He wants the whole of humanity to dissolve with him.

Brouwn is a space traveller and wants the viewers to become space travellers too. In a rare interview from 1967, the artist said of the ‘This way Brouwn’ series: ‘Brouwn makes people discover the streets they use every day. A farewell from the city, the earth, before we make the great leap into space, before we discover outer space.’

In 1964, he wrote a short manifesto for the Institute of Contemporary Arts Bulletin, in which it transpires that he believes in a future so abstract that people dissolve into time and space and colour. It is a kind of world in which there is no memory, a world in which art would also dissolve. Brouwn wishes to contribute to that dissolution through his work. He wants to make the world abstract. It is as if he wants to make him­self disappear, to conjure himself away through thought – which is a tremendous paradox, of course, because in order to conjure yourself away through thought you need to be present.

‘4000 A.D.

When science and art are entirely

melted together to something new

When the people will have lost their

remembrance and thus will have

no past, only future.

When they will have to discover everything

every moment again and again

When they will have lost their need for contact with others …

Then they will live in a world of only colour, light, space, time, sounds and movement

Then colour light space time

sounds and movement will be free

No music

No theatre

No art

No

There will be sound

Colour

Light

Space

Time

Movement’

What kind of world is being evoked here? The year 4000 ad is a time that can hardly be envisaged. Picturing it means imagining you are dead and that, from death, you return to the world of the living. In that time people will no longer have a sense of memory, past or future. In other words, they will be living in a kind of eternal present. That must be something like eternity itself. This is what spirituality strives for, a world outside of time. Because everything is constantly being forgotten, everything has to be continually rediscovered. This is why it is a form of intensified being, of complete receptivity. Every time you look in the mirror you will see yourself for the first time. It is a world in which there is no need to connect with others, a world without the possibility even to do so: how can you make a connection with someone if you forget them the next instant? Man is what he sees and he has ceased to cast judgement. He has become blank on the inside, which means he can become what he sees. Four thousand years after Christ, the dream of the artist is realized and man has finally become abstract. Man is colour, light, space, time and movement.

Brouwn wishes to be a man who walks the earth, a human being like any other. The work concerns ‘a’ human being – with an indefinite article – a human being who moves through life. He wishes to preoccupy himself with space and distance and direction. He wants the viewer to become his work. That is only possible by letting the viewers complete his work in their imagination, over and over again. They are forced to be­come space and distance, forced to experience space as if it were 4000 ad. They will forget them­selves and no longer have need for the notions of art and the artist. Brouwn will no longer be relevant.

If we did know what Brouwn looked like today – whether he was married and to whom, how many children he had, what the interior of his house looked like and where his personal problems lay – would that diminish the impact of his work? Would that mean we, the viewers, were less capable of dissolving into his work? And doesn’t an artist of whom we know everything turn, slowly, into a blank personality? We know everything about Tracey Emin: we know how she is feeling, what’s happening in her her love life, where she grew up. We know her naked and from fashion shoots. We have seen her unmade bed in the gallery; we have seen the inside of her home in interior design magazines. And yet she too remains an abstraction, a great void that wishes to fill itself up with meaning and images – and she needs the viewer for that.

The idea of conceptual art was that the person of the artist was no longer relevant. Yet Brouwn still claims his artisthood. His name is the final thread that connects him as a person to his work. The ultimate step would be to cut that thread. Become anonymous. Disappear. Dissolve. To let time be time and space be space and colours be colours. And to not only dream of forgetting but to forget and to be forgotten.

_{Translated by Kate Christina Mayne}

OSCAR VAN DEN BOOGAARD

Oscar van den Boogaard is a Dutch novelist and playwright who lives in Ghent and Brussels, Belgium and Berlin, Germany. His work has been widely translated. His novel Love’s Death (2001) was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He is the artistic director of the Higher Institute for Fine Arts, Ghent, Belgium.