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Nicole BotsNicole Bots (Roermond, 1954), lives in Maastricht and works in Puth (Schinnen). Born the daughter of a brick manufacturer Nicole Bots fell in love with clay at an early age. After training in Childcare and Handicraft she worked for a number of years for NSDSK (the Netherlands Foundation for Deaf and Hearing-impaired Children). When her own children were young she studied pedagogy. She worked for many years as a pedagogic assistant in the Academic Medical Centre, the teaching hospital of Amsterdam University. Nicole Bots never lost her interest in clay entirely, and in 1997 she definitively decided to start using the material professionally. She took lessons with Dutch ceramists Susan Ohler and Arja Hoogstad, from whom she acquired the necessary ceramic techniques. Nicole Bots uses clay pigments to colour the clay when still wet. This clay is formed into strips and flat pieces of varying sizes, which are gradually built up to give the figure its final shape. She is inspired by older and other cultures, by landscapes and architecture, but also by tales and stories. In her work one might recognize an abstract Ecuador landscape or the terraced landscape of the wine-growing Alsace. But not only the shape of her sculptures tells a story: so do the mysterious signs and symbols she impresses on the clay. The Gallery Archea Ancient Art has allowed Nicole Bots to make use of 5000-year-old cylinder seals from Mesopotamia. This led to her contact with the most important cylinder seal collector in the Netherlands whose seals she is now able to use. The Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam has been showing the collection of cylinder seals and thematic work by Nicole Bots in 2003. She works intuitively from her imagination. She sometimes ''has a row with the material'' when it will take her many hours to get the clay to do as she wishes. The ultimate shapes are the outcome of her experiences visual and otherwise, readings, feelings and sensations.
Exhibitions1997 exhibition at home with friends Amsterdam
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