Anneke Bloema is a member of the Beautiful Bizarre Artist Directory
As a kid, Anneke Bloema loved drawing, animals, and playing outdoors. She has an older brother and a younger sister. They are very close in age. She has fond memories of their imaginative childhood together. They played and fought together as pirates, as princes and princesses. They were the imaginary owners of a circus called ‘The Jabadaba’s’, did rollovers and hopscotch, and other ‘amazing’ tricks, while dreaming of a great career. Anneke is glad that they have never completely lost that childhood fantasy world. “I make surreal collages with animals in the lead. I create these collages with photos from my archive”.
When she was 18, Anneke took up photography as a hobby. Gradually, photography became her profession, and in 2001 she founded her own company, The Factory II. Over the years, she started doing more and more graphic design like collages. “In time I found a way to tell the stories I wanted to tell. I loved it that I could create new worlds this way”.
After winning a significant prize for her illustrations in 2018, Anneke was very encouraged to go on. In 2020, when the whole world came to a standstill because of the pandemic, there were no photo shoots to do, and she suddenly had the time required to give her collages all the attention they deserved. This resulted in Wondrous Goose.
Nowadays, Anneke spends most of her time making collages. For her collages, Anneke use photographs that she has taken herself. In these works, animals represent human characters, dreams and idiosyncrasies. The animals she has portrayed in her 20-year career as a photographer, now tell stories in surreal collages. They live in landscapes that she has photographed over the years.
Anneke Bloema lives with her wife and dogs in the countryside. She still likes to play outside, just as her dogs do. These days, ‘The Jabadabas’ has become the name of the app group where she shares with her siblings. Occasionally Anneke still also plays hopscotch!
In Anneke Bloema’s surreal collages, animals are always the main characters. Somehow, they travel a lot, most of the time for fun, but some are a little lost. Some animals like to dress up, like Daphne, who is very proud of her new red shoes. Her animals need to express their identity, just like humans. Some want to be bigger or different than they actually are, like ‘The Biggest Bird’ and they all carry within them a desire to be free.
“Freedom – Fun – Identity – Adventure -Travel – Wandering – Parables – Fairytale”
Anneke Bloema’s works have been featured in Photographize magazine.
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