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Anook (1972) graduated with honours at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam and at the Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam.
She lives and works in Billy-sur-Oisy,
Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, France.
Her work can be found at, among others, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Baltimore Museum of Art, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, corporate collections like Ahold Delhaize, Royal Dutch Marines HQ and Achmea and many private collections big and small.
Anook is founder partner and director of Vouch. Vouch successfully helps create the conditions for a meaningful encounter between art, artist and audience.
Vouch links here.
first 1000 days in Burgundy
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
Anaïs Nin
Postcards from a life in the making
A thousand days. The art of beginning again.
What happens when you begin again? When you leave behind the familiar, take the first step and allow yourself not to know exactly where it will lead?
In late summer 2026, my love and I moved to Burgundy, France, in search of more space, time and freedom to make art. In a tiny village, we found an old shop, a former dance hall and a carpenter’s workshop. Places with stories of their own, waiting for a new chapter. We saw the possibility of something we had long dreamed of: studios of our own and a different way of living and working.
But beginning again is an art in itself. How do you find your feet in an unfamiliar landscape? How do you settle into a new rhythm, make room for new habits and stay open to what you cannot yet imagine?
They say it takes around a thousand days to put down roots in a new place. I decided to make those days my artistic playground.
Through a daily painting on wood, I explore what it means to start afresh. To pay attention, look more closely and discover what happens when you give a place and a process time to reveal themselves.
These paintings are my postcards from Burgundy. Small, intimate glimpses of a life unfolding, each capturing a moment of looking, wondering, trying or becoming. Some begin with something as ordinary as a walk through the village or the changing light on an old wall. Others emerge from the simple need to make something, without knowing exactly what it will become.
Together, they tell the story of finding my place here, one painting at a time.
Perhaps that is what makes this journey more than a story about moving to France. You don't have to leave everything behind to begin again. Sometimes, all it takes is slowing down, looking differently and allowing yourself to follow a new thought or take a step into the unknown.
I invite you to follow the project as it unfolds. Discover the paintings, share in the process and find inspiration in the everyday. Perhaps a painting will bring back a memory, make you look at your own surroundings differently or find a place in your home. Or perhaps you will find one that you want to give to someone you love.
Each painting is a small piece of this new life, made in Burgundy and ready to become part of someone else's story.
A thousand days is not a destination. It's a way of paying attention to the life you're building, one day at a time.
Welcome to Burgundy. Come along and be part of the journey.
