SKY
2020-2025
An Imagined Freedom
The world of culture - like everything else - came to a standstill during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021.
In Paris, within the constrained calm of those motionless months, I felt a double confinement: the walls around me seemed to close in, and the sky itself had vanished. All my exhibitions were cancelled; the world felt frozen in place.
So, in my Montmartre studio, I searched for a way out.
I began to paint the sky I could no longer see.
From this intimate quest was born the series SKY , a breath, an opening, a way to reinvent light. A window onto an imagined freedom, my way of breathing.
« Freedom »- triptyc 50 x 300 cm – acrylic on canvas– Manuela Luchtmeijer 2022
Chiaroscuro as Heritage
My skies belong, modestly, to the lineage of the Dutch Masters of the Golden Age, those painters who made the sky a true protagonist. In their work, light does not merely illuminate, it tells a story.
The cloud-laden landscapes of Jacob van Ruisdael, the endless horizons of Aelbert Cuyp, and the vast, stormy skies of Hendrik Willem Mesdag have all deeply shaped my gaze.
These artists knew how to capture the breath of the world - the humidity of the air, the weight of a cloud, the trembling of shifting light.
Their mastery of chiaroscuro , that subtle dialogue between shadow and light, lends their landscapes an almost spiritual intensity.
They painted transition, impermanence, the emotion of time itself.
In their wake, I too seek that suspended moment when light becomes emotion, when matter seems to dissolve into atmosphere.
But where those masters often evoked divine presence through nature, I explore another form of sacredness - the inner space, a mental sky where introspection, memory, and the longing for freedom meet.
My work does not attempt to reproduce nature, but to reveal the experience of seeing - what one feels before infinity, before the instability of the world, before oneself.
Dancing in the Dark I et II – 120 x 100 cm (x 2) – acrylic on canvas – Manuela Luchtmeijer 2023
Symbols and Resonance
The paintings in the SKY series can be read on several levels.
First, there is the direct gaze: the observation of the sky, its shifting forms, its ever-changing light.
But beyond the subject itself, each work carries a symbolic dimension.
The sky becomes a metaphor - for the return of breath, the longing for freedom, but also for a world in transformation, from climate change to the confusion of our times.
Each painting tells a story, personal or collective, an emotion or a tension that speaks to the moment we live in.
Here, chiaroscuro becomes a language — a dialogue between light and shadow, between balance and chaos.
Through it, the SKY series seeks to make visible what we often only feel: the fragile beauty of a world on the edge, and the hope that still persists in the light.
Studies
A few examples of my studies. Some of these small-format works are preludes to my very large canvases. I usually paint them quite quickly, in acrylic, often in a single session, directly on canvas — working either from my own photographs or from the landscape itself. They are, in a way, my painted sketches.
DUTCH SPRING
Majestic, cloudy skies over the River IJssel. A small series of studies painted on location along the River IJssel in the Netherlands, in the spring of 2022 — under the ever-shifting northern wind and the vast, restless sky.
« Looking out (for you) », study, acrylic on canvas, Manuela Luchtmeijer 2022
« Going Dutch » and « Dutch Spring I – II – III », studies, acrylic on canvas, Manuela Luchtmeijer 2022
Exhibitions of the SKY Series
The large-format painting "Catch me if you can" was selected for the salon Art Capital en fevrier 2023 and later exhibited at the prestigious l'Atelier Néerlandais (Embassy of the Netherlands) in June 2023.
Performances in front of the painting Catch me if you can (120 × 150 cm) by Manuela Luchtmeijer at the Atelier Néerlandais, June 2023.
June 2024 Solo exhibition at Galerie POS, Paris 10th arr.
April > Oct. 2025 – Group exhibition “Rêve!” at Campredon Centre d’Art & Image, Isle-sur-la-Sorgue Campredon centre art & image , Isle-sur-Sorgue
In collaboration with Dutch fashion designer Saskia ter Welle – Installation GOLDEN SKY.
GOLDEN SKY is a poetic exploration and a subtle dialogue between painting and couture. Inspired by the skies of the Dutch Masters, Manuela Luchtmeijer’s cloudscapes evoke reverie, introspection, and freedom. In response, Saskia ter Welle translates this atmosphere into contemporary, ethereal textile creations. Together, the two Dutch artists blur the boundaries between art and fashion, giving rise to a dreamlike universe.
SOON! December 11 & 12, 2025 – SKY HIGH – Exhibit with Saskia ter Welle à l’Atelier Néerlandais
