The World Around Us. The World Within Us.

Why I Created Two Different Collections

For many years, I thought I was creating different bodies of work.

The Mona Lisa Project.
The Earth Keepers Collection.

They looked different.
They were created in different periods of my life.
They asked different questions.

Only recently did I realise they are actually telling the same story from two different directions.

The Mona Lisa Project explores the world around us.

Earth Keepers explores the world within us.

That simple realization changed the way I look at my own work.

The World Around Us

When I started the Mona Lisa Project in 2001, I wasn't trying to recreate Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece.

I was fascinated by something much bigger.

How does humanity change over time?

Every generation leaves behind new symbols.

Fashion changes.

Technology changes.

Politics changes.

The way we communicate changes.

Even the objects we carry every day become visual markers of an era.

By painting and reimagining the Mona Lisa again and again, I began documenting those changes. Every artwork became a portrait of its own time. Together, the collection evolved into a visual archive of contemporary culture, showing how identity continuously shifts while something deeply human remains.

The Mona Lisa became my witness to the outside world.

The World Within Us

Years later, after a period of slowing down, spending long days by the sea and rebuilding my life, another collection quietly began to emerge.

Not because I was looking for it.

Because I was finally creating from a different place.

The Earth Keepers are not portraits of specific people.

They are portraits of qualities we all recognise.

Courage.

Stillness.

Trust.

Resilience.

Compassion.

Hope.

They don't tell people what to believe.

They don't offer answers.

Instead, they invite a moment of reflection.

Sometimes a single image can express something that words struggle to explain.

That is what the Earth Keepers try to do.

Two Collections. One Story.

At first glance, the Mona Lisa Project and Earth Keepers appear completely different.

One explores contemporary culture.

The other explores the human experience.

But together they describe something much larger.

One asks what is happening around us.

The other asks what is happening within us.

The two collections balance each other.

One documents society.

The other reflects the individual.

One observes change.

The other reminds us of what remains constant.

Together they form the artistic universe of Studio Florentijn.

Looking Both Ways

Art has the ability to help us look in two directions at the same time.

Outward, to better understand the world we live in.

Inward, to better understand ourselves.

For me, that is the connection between the Mona Lisa Project and the Earth Keepers Collection.

One documents the world around us.

The other documents the world within us.

Perhaps we need both.

Because understanding the future begins with understanding ourselves.