Laura Tietjens is a Dutch-born artist whose work spans continents, cultures, and emotional depths. She paints people, but more than that—she paints layers of experience, memory, and meaning. Her process is raw, intuitive, and honest. Her paintings aren’t polished products. They’re conversations. You feel them before you analyze them.

Since graduating from art school in the Netherlands in 1986, Tietjens has been immersed in creative work. She’s exhibited widely, been published in five catalogues, and sold hundreds of paintings across the globe. Her career took a sharp turn in 2014 when she moved to Barcelona. With no safety net, she painted to survive. Tourists became clients. Galleries followed. Commissions grew. Her paintings found homes in every corner of the world—from Iceland to the Philippines, from China to South Africa.

Her artistic voice is deeply personal. As a child, she drew constantly. It wasn’t just a talent—it was a need. That need stayed with her through years of doubt, illness, and reinvention. For 14 years, she was mostly bedridden. During that time, she painted when she could and turned inward. What emerged was a new sense of clarity. Art was not optional. It was essential.

Her work reflects this inner world—layered, emotional, vulnerable. She paints mostly people, combining materials like acrylic, oil, spray paint, newspaper, text, and found imagery. Each painting holds a story she can’t always tell with words. The process is intuitive. She lets each piece reveal itself.

Tietjens’ paintings often include figures surrounded by visual noise: abstract landscapes, symbolic textures, bursts of color. There’s a tension between isolation and connection, chaos and calm. Viewers respond to that. Her collectors describe feeling seen, understood, and comforted by her work. That, for her, is the true purpose of painting—not decoration, but recognition.

She has exhibited in the Netherlands, France, Cyprus, Spain, Germany, China, and the U.S. She’s completed murals, participated in art fairs, and appeared in newspapers, magazines, and radio. Her work is also sold in art stores from Amsterdam to Philadelphia to Shanghai.

Tietjens lives by a simple truth: creation is grounding. In her words, “In this lopsided reality where establishment comes crumbling down, we need a new stability—creativity, visions, and dreams, growing from the soil of our understanding and love.”

Her art is that soil. And it keeps growing.