Esther Verschoor artistic style was spurred on by the dolls in Virginie Ropars’ The Wasp Queen. This put into motion a series of events; the purchase of a sculpting kit, the wielding of her tailor’s chalk, grabbing hold of her dress maker’s pair of scissors – all changing her direction from designing and producing her children’s clothing to creating didactic dolls of a different nature.
Esther, the autodidact, breathes a different kind of life into the skulls of animals deceased due to natural causes – old-age, illness, and traffic accidents. Her Dark Art gives Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride an almost lifelike quality, captivating yet unsettling to the viewer with its charm and human-like quality.
The artist is qualified in textile art and perused work in mental healthcare thereafter. “I create mainly so-called skull dolls, human-like figures with an animal skull.” She elaborates, “Sometimes these figures have an open skirt with scenery inside, and sometimes they have a dynamic pose or are automata. Even though the figures have an animal skull, a lot of people can identify themselves with the human emotions they express. My work can be classified as Light Dark Art.”
Her animal skull-doll figures attract whomever wishes to listen to the story it has to tell.
