Biography

Heleen Posthumus (Heerlen, 1943) was always drawing as a child. During her grammar school years, she attended drawing lessons in the evenings with Herman Filott, who trained students for the MO-A drawing certificate. She went to study German in Utrecht because her parents advised against art school. During that period, she made sets or decorated parties. When she and her husband moved to Dordrecht, she also took painting lessons there, made wall hangings and took up pottery. After that, caring for family and work took precedence for a while. After moving to the Achterhoek in 2002, there was room for further development. She took painting lessons again and attended workshops in the Achterhoek and abroad.

She learned the monoprint technique from Béa Verheul (Ruurlo), took painting lessons with Sabine Jahnke (Heelweg), did 2 master classes at Royal Talens in Apeldoorn, a workshop with Prof. Yuri Wassilyev from St. Petersburg and painting courses with Michael Bause and Renate Meinardus in Arnsberg

Every year, she goes to the Pfalz and Freie Kunstakademie Augsburg for painting weeks with Renate Kutke and Andrea Rozorea for new techniques and creative impulses. She also took painting classes from artist Stephan Geisler (Bochum) and the Swiss Robert Süess (Hattingen).

Since 2003, she has participated in numerous (group) exhibitions and studio tours in the Netherlands and Germany. In 2014, she was part of the international art project Family Chronicles at the Textile Museum in Bocholt. In 2016, she had a solo exhibition at the Alte Molkerei in Bocholt. She organised an exhibition at the Stadtgalerie of Sundern (Germany) in 2017 as moderator with the artist collective Diversity. With Diversity, she exhibited in galleries in Haaksbergen, Roosendaal, Emmen, Geldrop, Muiden and Zutphen, among others. In 2020 her paintings hung at Mondileder in Soesterberg and in the town hall of Berkelland (Borculo, NL). Now she has an exhibition at Randerode in Apeldoorn until the end of October 2023.