Portrait nominee

For several years Van Zeijl worked with horses to overcome her troubled childhood traumas. She learned to connect, listen deeply, embody their wisdom and experienced how the horses guided her to reach beyond for new growth and balance toward greater freedom. The horse meaning signifies overcoming obstacles, and how you should carry yourself in the face of adversity. The horse represents the strength of maturity to handle what life brings. Van Zeijl travelled the Wild West upon a horseback to look for wild horses. Her journey and the meaningful relationship between horses and humans inspired her to investigate and dive deep and created a series self-portraits with horses. Every night she photographed herself with the horses under the moonlight. Sitting naked in the freezing cold nature in front of her camera. In order to gain the horse’s trust she had to evolve into complete surrender. These series carry out an important message for all of us. It is time to embark on the ultimate voyage trough inner space, to learn to trust, surrender, and gain natural leadership to achieve the impossible, to achieve your own moonshot.

Fascinated by the art of the past and different perspectives on beauty through the ages, Fine Art Photographer Isabelle van Zeijl explores the aesthetics and technics of the past to re-invent a contemporary art work in her practice. Boundaries fade as she blends techniques and idiom of the old masters with present-day aesthetics to create striking portraits. By evoking both alienation and recognition, while addressing our collective memory, her photographs seduce the audience.
By framing her own appearance within the broader context of the classical canon Van Zeijl explores beauty. Digitally composing her photographs like a painter by using techniques of the past, her work never compromises on authenticity. Even though she is both creator, object and subject, her fine art photography reaches beyond the genre of self-portraiture, creating a universal woman and a vision of female aesthetics over time. With each portrait Isabelle gets closer to both her personal truth and an all-embracing meaning of beauty that transcends time and age.
Van Zeijl has shown work continuously and internationally over the past ten years, represented by galleries located in The UK, The Netherlands, and New York and exhibiting at emerging and established international art fairs in New York, Miami.