Bidspirit auction | Marloes Hakkers

Marloes Hakkers - ''Lior'' 2026. Drawn from life, this charcoal portrait captures a moment of complete inwardness. Lior sits with  her face turned slightly upward, as if listening to something only she can hear. Strong light cuts  across her features, carving the face into planes of dark and light. Her long hair falls loosely  around her shoulders, grounding the composition in softness while the face itself holds all the  tension. A quiet work that asks nothing of its subject and everything of the viewer. Charcoal on paper 47/37 cm signed Marloes Hakkers is a figurative painter based in Tel Aviv, originally from the Netherlands. Born into a working-class family, she grew up in a single-mother household where pursuing a career in painting simply didn’t feel like a possibility. Nine years ago she moved to Israel, and it was here, with the support of her husband, that she finally gave herself permission to pursue what she couldn’t ignore. Her entire artistic education took place in Israel: she studied for a year at the Jerusalem Studio School under Yedidya Hershberg and Deborah Sebaoun, continued with courses under Ilya Gefter, and has since been studying with David Nipo. Israel didn’t just become her home; it became the place where she became a painter. Her work moves between portrait, still life, and landscape, though subject matter is secondary to her. Whether it’s a face or a lemon, it always comes down to shape, light, and perception. She paints because she has to. It is, as she puts it, “the one constant in my life that never leaves.” ''I often find myself questioning what realism really is. We like to think we see and paint “reality, ” but every painting is just a frozen moment of perception, a mix of observation and interpretation. My work is rooted in looking closely: at light, at form, at fleeting moments.''