My artname is grietgriet, but was born as Griet Cornille, close to the North Sea. The sea and the coastal landscape are still somehow interwoven in my work. It is no coincidence that my first exhibition was titled *Girls of the North Sea*.

I have needed to draw, paint, and write for as long as I can remember. It is as if every emotion I feel seeks a way out - on paper, in color, in an image. For a long time, I mainly made things for myself or for the people close to me. Much originated in small notebooks and on loose sheets of paper.

After years of keeping diaries in words, about ten years ago I began to represent my days in images. Drawings, fragments from books, photographs, and found images grow together into collages and visual stories. The words disappeared, but the stories remained. Only they are no longer fixed: the viewer is free to discover their own meaning within them.

I am a social worker by training. Perhaps that is why I find it so valuable to create for others. For years, I participated in gallery exhibitions, but today I focus primarily on custom work: personal pieces for individuals and unique artworks for companies, in which their story or identity is interwoven with my visual language. Just as I design social projects where the connecting factor is just as important as creativity.

People and expression are the common thread in everything I create - on paper, canvas, or in a book.