My Story

Sustainable art from waste

I have always believed that the most beautiful stories arise from what people often overlook.

After traveling to more than fifty countries, I learned to look differently at people, cultures, and especially at nature. Traveling not only broadens your perspective, it also deepens your awareness. I saw beauty everywhere. But in recent years, I also saw something else: more and more waste. Plastic on beaches. Waste materials in cities. Disposable products without a destination.

That contrast, between beauty and waste, became the basis of my work as an artist. I started creating sustainable art from recycled materials.

Uniek kunstwerk op maat gemaakt in Nederland door Maaike van Wijk.

When everything came together

The spark for my art from waste emerged unexpectedly. Eva, my friend Diana's daughter, created a beautiful artwork from waste materials. What she did intuitively touched me.

Not much later, in the midst of the Covid period, I bought an artwork made from recycled materials by a township resident in Cape Town, where we lived at the time. That moment changed something within me.

I was sold. Both literally and figuratively.

From that moment on, I knew: I want to create sustainable art. I want to show that waste is not the end of a product, but the beginning of a new story.
Kunst van hergebruikte materialen, uniek werk van kunstenares Maaike van Wijk.

Recycled art

After our remigration to the Netherlands in 2023, I started creating artworks from plastic waste materials. What began as an experiment grew into my mission as a Dutch artist in the world of circular art.

I now work with thousands of bottle caps that cafes and restaurants save specially for me. Every cap, cord, or piece of plastic that was once simply thrown away gets a second life in my studio.

With my work, I not only want to create something aesthetic. I want to contribute to a broader movement of awareness. For me, recycled art is not a trend, but a way of seeing, a way of life.

You can experience my plastic art in two ways. From a distance, you see the composition, color, and movement, and up close you discover hundreds to thousands of recognizable materials.

That tension, between the overall image and the detail, is essential in my work. It invites you to look again.

From local initiative to international exhibitions

What started with a growing awareness has now grown into an international journey. My sustainable artworks are exhibited from Dubai to Boston and from London to Oslo, in addition to exhibitions and placements with companies and individuals in the Netherlands.

I also collaborate with galleries at home and abroad that share the same vision: art can combine beauty and awareness.

I hope that my art makes people pause, that they look at waste differently, and that they discover beauty where they didn't see it before. Because what we throw away might tell the most honest story about our time. And that's exactly where my art begins.