is an Amsterdam-based visual artist whose paintings and drawings explore an intimate reality that does not immediately reveal itself. She studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam from 1979 to 1985, where she later returned as a lecturer – a role she has maintained since 1989, contributing to several international educational projects in Europe and Asia.

Observation is the point of departure in her work, yet never as a passive act. Instead, she treats perception as an active, relational process in which meaning shifts and emerges gradually. Her imagery often carries a poetic, almost dream-like quality – in the words of one art critic, her paintings possess “the suggestive power of a fairy tale,” as if she were “painting with a magic wand.”

A recurring motif in her artistic language is hair – strands, tangled forms, floating lines and woven structures that traverse the surface like organic landscapes. Through density, texture, rhythm and layering, she transforms a familiar element into something abstract, tactile and open to interpretation. The works evolve through actions such as hanging, drifting or balancing, resulting in compositions that hover between precision and spontaneity.

Since her first solo exhibition in Amsterdam in 1988, Juul van den Heuvel has presented her work widely in the Netherlands and abroad, including exhibitions in major European art centres. Her recent projects further expand her artistic vocabulary: in The Legacy / De nalatenschap (2019), she used family objects, drawings and artifacts to build a sensitive reflection on memory, inheritance and the traces we leave behind.

Across more than three decades, van den Heuvel has developed a distinctive body of work that is both personal and universal. Her art invites viewers to slow down, to look closely, and to find beauty in what is fragile, hidden and fleeting — transforming the ordinary into the quietly extraordinary.