My name is Annette Groen.

Who am I? What moves me?
These are questions I've been asking myself since I was young.

Born with a physical disability, I learned early to compensate with my mind.
A smart, tough little biter—not always loved, but strong-willed.
I found safety in silence, in my room, where I could express my feelings on paper.
Writing, drawing, painting, working with beads, wood, glass, or enamel: everything was a form of speech without words.

As a young adult, I spent days looking at my paintings to understand how I was doing.
My subconscious spoke in color.
I called that process "mopping" —a way to purify myself.
Hard on myself, often on others as well, but always in search of truth.

By translating my own work, I learned to laugh, to cry, and to understand who I was—and still am.

When my children were little, I found joy in sharing their creativity: teaching, building sets, arranging exhibitions, painting walls with castles, fairies, or horses—whatever the children wanted.
No hugging mom, but close by.

The year all the children flew the nest at once became a year of great letting go.

Widow, Empty Nest, and Grandmother — three life transitions that, together, formed the word GONE.  -In Dutch, the first letters form the word “WEG”, meaning “GONE” — a word that holds both absence and direction.A word that speaks of loss, yet also of movement. -
In a single season, everything shifted:
what once defined me fell away,
and something quieter, more spacious, began to unfold.
Becoming a grandmother felt like both an arrival and a farewell —
a gentle letting go of my own youth,
and the beginning of something timeless within me.

I started writing again, to create space in my head and heart.
Slowly, the urge to paint returned.
The silence and peace I now experience inspire me daily.

My paintings are the colours of my life – in feeling, emotion and movement.