Three by Three: Guest Artists in Focus

QUESTION 2.    Your mixed media process combines control—through stitching, embroidery, and structure—with surrender via intuitive painting and layering. What tells you when to hold the reins and when to let the work unravel a bit?

• ANSWER 2.     At the moment, I am very much in a phase of release. Earlier in my practice, I worked with far more intention and control—planning, structuring, and deciding what the work should become. While that approach had its place, I began to feel that the work no longer reflected me. It felt constructed rather than lived.

  Now I work almost entirely through intuition. I let the materials lead and respond moment by moment, allowing the work to unravel if it needs to. The balance reveals itself through sensation rather than decision.

  Stitching, embroidery, and layering still appear, but they emerge as responses rather than plans. I enjoy the process more this way. The work feels more honest, more embodied, and closer to how I experience the world. Letting go of control hasn’t diminished the work—it has allowed it to speak in a voice that finally feels like my own.

Ingrid Op’t Hof
Visual Artist

MEDIUM:    mixed-media

BIO:    South African–born artist living and working in Dubai. I have experimented across many mediums, but I am currently in love with mixed media—where layers, depth, and time can coexist. My work is built slowly, through accumulation and response, allowing meaning to surface rather than be forced. I’m drawn to texture and tactility, often incorporating textiles and found objects that carry quiet histories of their own. These materials become a language—stitched, layered, worn—holding memory, emotion, and presence. Whether in the studio or therapeutic space, my work is an invitation to pause, to feel, and to notice what emerges when we allow ourselves to work with, rather than against, the process.

INSTAGRA:    @Thea.ArtistAndTherapist

QUESTION 3.    You describe art as a universal language for resilience and integration. When someone encounters your work without knowing your therapeutic background, what do you hope they feel before they try to understand?

• ANSWER 3.     Before understanding, I hope they feel. I hope the work meets them in the body rather than the intellect—through depth, texture, and emotional weight. I want them to sense lives lived, time passing, and experiences layered upon one another—not just my own, but those we all carry individually.

  If the work stirs something unnamed—comfort, unease, recognition, or curiosity—then it has already done its work. Understanding can come later, or not at all. What matters to me is that the viewer feels a sense of depth: of resilience shaped through experience, of complexity held rather than resolved. In that moment of felt connection, the work becomes a shared space rather than a statement.

QUESTION 1.    You move fluidly between roles as artist and art therapist, often working with both individuals and groups. How do you know when a piece wants to function as personal expression versus a container for collective healing?

• ANSWER 1.    For me, all art is a vessel for healing, whether it is created alone or within a group. What shifts is not the intention of the art, but the responsibility I hold as a practitioner.

  When I am working as an artist, the work can move freely—responding to my inner landscape, my questions, my need to process. When I am working as an art therapist, the art still leads, but my role becomes one of containment. I focus on creating a safe, attuned space where the materials, the process, and the group can do the work they need to do.

  I know a piece is functioning as a container for collective healing when it begins to hold more than one voice—when it invites shared presence rather than personal resolution. In those moments, I step back, listen more closely, and trust the art to speak. Healing doesn’t come from directing meaning, but from allowing the process to unfold within safety, relationship, and respect for each individual’s rhythm.

Apart: Mixed media, 90 × 70 cm, 2025

All copyright and reproduction rights are reserved by Ingrid Op’t Hof.
Artwork may not be reproduced in any form without the artist's express written permission.

CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL VIEW

CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL VIEW

CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL VIEW

Layers of Becoming: Mixed media, 100 × 90 cm, 2025

The Uncertainty of Growth: Mixed media, 40 × 30 cm, 2025