INGRID MANN-WILLIS was born in Bandung, Java, Indonesia in 1939.  Part of her childhood was spent under the Japanese occupation of Indonesia and her parents were interned in concentration camps. After the war, her family returned to Holland. 

Her love for the arts began when she started to visit the major art galleries on a regular basis. She graduated with BFA from the University of Victoria in 1996.

Her adult life has been spent throughout the United States and Canada.  In 1992 she settled in the Okanagan Valley of B.C.


Artist's Statement

I am inspired by the colours of time-worn carpets and the ancient façades of East-Indian, Turkish and Indonesian architecture.

Objects that perish slowly have a nobility of their own.  They are like fragmented sentences, broken stories, frayed edges seemingly falling apart and are more beautiful when old than when new.

I isolate sections of these objects and simplify them.  I love to explore the energies connected with colour and meditation and spend time removing the layers of paint to bring the work back to its core.  The 'core' and abstracting it, is important.

Manipulating the paint, developing surfaces, peeling, adding and subtracting layers, looking beyond the surface and finding fundamental differences has a spiritual feel to me.

I tend to work in series; my synthesis evolves from one painting to the next.