Maria was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands where she received a teaching degree in fine arts in 1980. She has lived in the local area, since 1989. Maria has held a private practice in Energy Healing Science for over 35 years and has been teaching courses in energy healing, self-healing and personal development, bringing her art as a therapy, to her students. During COVID Lockdown, she rekindled her long ignored love for art and painting. I am absolutely in love with Scotland and take my inspiration from the Scottish sea-scape. Magical feelings happen within me when the light that dances over the mountains and lochs reaches my eyes and reflects the beauty of earth and skies and seas. In its simple way it describes weather to me, but truly it ignites deep feelings of spiritual connection and love. I take photos on my daily walks and sketch on location. I then take these images into my studio as a reference for painting. Once the basic idea is on the canvas, I abandon my reference and go on an inner journey with colour and patterns to recreate the views that I love. As I paint these feelings come again alive in me. I mostly work with a limited pallet which is more exciting to me as I need to mix paints more. This takes me on an surprising journey of creating many colours I wasn’t expecting, much like observing the light dancing over the sea. The finished painting doesn’t necessarily accurately