After a long stretch of stability and security, Marissa Oosterlee finds herself in another state of transition. It’s not a comfortable place to be, but she’s been here before, and her art-making has always seen her through.

Oosterlee was born in Valkenburg, a small town in South Holland (not to be confused with the much bigger city further north) between Amsterdam and the Hague. As a child she was plagued by asthmatic symptoms that regularly landed her in the hospital, and rendered her unable to attend school. Like many solitary kids, she spent a lot of time drawing and immersed in other imaginative activities.

Where Fire Learns to Breathe, 2025, acrylic on panel, 23 2/3 x 19¾ in.

Oosterlee was still a young girl when doctors discovered her respiratory issues were triggered by an allergy to nightshades and lactose, not environmental factors. With her newfound freedom from physical limitations, Oosterlee put down her quiet creative pursuits and turned her focus to athletics, cycling specifically, winning a major triathlon by the age of 13. By Oosterlee’s own account, for a long time she was one of the best semi-professional road cyclists on the circuit. Her trajectory was derailed in 2001 when, at the age of 20, a horrible crash at nearly 60 miles per hour catapulted her into a ravine, resulting in critical injuries that would require over a year of rehabilitation.

“I had a severely damaged body, brain…I had to learn to walk again,” she says. “My hips, pelvis, spine and all my organs were all moved around from the impact, and all my vital functions went down.” Her cycling dreams shattered, and largely immobile, Oosterlee revisited one of her earliest sources of entertainment and solace—painting.  

Achelois - A little light in the darkness, oil on gessoed board, 19¾ x 27½ in. 

Within a year, Oosterlee entered and won a competition to paint a portrait of then-Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. The ensuing publicity brought corporate job opportunities, and Oosterlee became a 3D illustrator, working on many high-profile projects in the video game industry. Meanwhile, Oosterlee was also taking on increasing numbers of commissions and teaching commitments, and by the time Photoshop displaced the commercial illustrator, she was ready for the next chapter. Oosterlee, who had been living in Belgium, returned to Holland and decided to take her workshops on the road and travel the world.

“[Returning to art] was a natural transition…It was the only thing that came to mind,” says Oosterlee. “I think the accident had to happen…If not for the accident, I would probably still be in sports, which isn’t where my heart is. I became fanatical because I couldn’t do it as a child. My father was fanatical about the sport. And it becomes an addiction—the endorphins. I think the accident was meant to take me out of the life that was not meant for me.”

Where Starlight Remembers You, 2025, acrylic and gold leaf on gessoed board, 391⁄3 in.

Oosterlee’s perception of a life-derailing incident that others might claim as an excuse for self-pity, is indicative of how she greets all of life's challenges—as opportunities.

During Covid, slogging through a cold and dreary Dutch winter, Oosterlee googled “the best place to live” and on the list was Valencia, Spain. She’s been living in Xàbia (or Jávea), a coastal beach town in the province of Alicante for five years, up until recently, with a partner. She’s temporarily staying at her mother’s house, also in the area, until the dust of her relationship settles and she fully finds her footing.

“I’m always lucky, even in unlucky situations,” says Oosterlee. “Because I stay positive. I thought everything was steady, solid. I had finally found some peace. But I know it will come to me again. You cannot ground if you are not one with the elements. But you need to see it, you need to feel it, and you need to be open to it. And you have to tell yourself no matter what happens, it’s no big deal.”

In the meantime, Oosterlee grounds herself through nature—and painting. 

A Long Journey, 2022, oil on canvas, 391⁄3 in. 

“It’s not the first time life has asked me to rebuild,” she continues, “and I’ve learned that forcing things only creates more resistance. For me, perseverance is not about pushing harder, it’s about returning to stillness. Nature helps, movement helps, but painting is where everything settles. It gives form to what I can’t always express in words. In more challenging periods, my work becomes quieter, more introspective…almost like a way of processing rather than producing. The work only moves when I slow down enough to listen to what is actually there. I often begin without a fixed outcome, but with a tension or feeling I don’t fully understand yet. Painting becomes a way of resolving that.”

Born of Light and Water, 2025, acrylic and oil on board, 19¾ x 19¾ in. 

Oosterlee’s painting style has shifted dramatically, and with increasing velocity, since the traditional figurative works that pre-date 2020, and also received high-level recognition. Her recent oeuvre has taken on a more contemporary edge, and water courses throughout it. 

The direction grew out of her series Washing Away My Sorrows, which was inspired by her horror at the plastics pollution in the Maldives, where she was expecting a pure, pristine environment. “The tension between beauty and damage stayed with me,” she says. “The paintings in this series…are about ‘the then, now and later.’ Life without water is not possible. Water symbolizes purity, clarity, tranquility. It reminds us that we need to clear our thoughts every now and then and that we must strive for a state of purity. That first painting became my voice. From there, the series evolved into something broader, about women, resilience and transformation.”

Oosterlee has run with the motif ever since, utilizing water’s properties, material and symbolic, to explore ever-unfolding  personal and universal depths. 

Angerona, 2018, acrylic and gold leaf, 47¼ x 35½ in. 

“Water functions as a visual language for complexity,” she says. “It allows distortion without losing form, creates both distance and intimacy, and introduces an element of unpredictability that keeps the work alive.”

This month’s cover piece, Where Fire Learns to Breath, along with works like Light Beneath the Waves and Born of Light and Water,all from 2025, are part of an ongoing series about light, not merely as a source of illumination, but as a dynamic entity that passes over, around and through the subject, enhancing a sense of presence and depth, physically and emotionally. 

Light Beneath the Waves, 2025, acrylic on panel, 24 x 16 in.

Where Starlight Remembers You, 2025, belongs to Oosterlee’s Kimono series, a grouping of works that incorporate gold and other metal leaf into mosaic-like compositions. “This series carries a different energy,” she says, “more grounded, but also more symbolic. There’s strength, heritage and a quiet presence in them…the kimono carries history, discipline and identity.”

Her Water Girls paintings feature partially submerged women floating on their backs, the water crystal clear but their internal worlds opaque to all except themselves, as they tap into the strength to surrender to transformation. 

Washing away My Sorrows, 2019, acrylic on gessoed board, 47¼ x 35½ in. 

Shredded, 2023, acrylic on panel, 232⁄3 x 35½ in. 

The paintings Oosterlee has created in the last few years build on mythological and archetypal narratives that find expression in earlier works like Achelois – a little light in the dark, 2020, and Angerona, 2018. They are beautiful pieces and essential to Oosterlee's progression as an artist, like cornerstones in a foundation unconsciously laid in preparation for Oosterlee to  truly spread her wings and fly—into a future envisioned and painted into being by her hand alone.

 

Detoxication, 2024, acrylic and gold leaf, 15¾ x 15¾ in. 

“After my accident, and also now, I noticed the same pattern: art becomes something I need, not something I do,” she says. “And in that space, something honest comes through, often stronger than when I try to control it…difficult periods refine the work. They leave less room for anything that isn’t honest.”  —

This August, Oosterlee’s work will be featured in a large group show at Principle Gallery in Alexandria, Virginia. Showcasing figurative paintings by more than two dozen of the finest contemporary realists working today, the exhibition, titled Bodies of Work, opens August 21 and runs through September 14.

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