Photo by Siem van Woerkom
'Anpanman' personal illustration

Profile
Maaike Canne is a Rotterdam-based illustrator and visual artist whose vibrant, colour-driven compositions reimagine everyday spaces with a cinematic stillness. Inspired by modernist architecture, interior design, and the natural world, her work explores the interplay between inside and outside. Rooms that open onto landscapes, structures that merge with their surroundings, striking a balance between graphic boldness and a quiet, almost nostalgic warmth.

Her scenes often feel like the moment just after someone has left the frame. That deliberate absence gives the work its pull: spaces rich with suggestion, inviting the viewer to step in and complete the story. She works across digital illustration, gouache, oil painting, and large-scale murals, moving between editorial commissions, packaging, and brand campaigns.

Base of Activity: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Media Used: Illustration and visual art

Selected CV:
1) HCCIE Cultural & Creative Industry Expo, Group exhibition, Hangzhou, CN (2025)
2) Represented by Agent Pekka 
3) Bachelor of Visual design, AKV St Joost, Breda, The Netherlands

Residence Plan
Throughout my practice, I have been interested in the relationship between people and the spaces they inhabit. My work explores how architecture, interiors, landscapes, and cultural values shape everyday experiences.
Rather than approaching Tokyo through its iconic landmarks, I am drawn to the quieter moments of daily life: small neighbourhood streets, cafés, waiting rooms, public baths, convenience stores, parks, train stations, apartment balconies, shared gardens, and the transitional spaces between inside and outside.

I am particularly fascinated by how Japanese culture creates harmony between contrasting elements: tradition and technology, individual and collective, city and nature, interior and exterior. These relationships have long influenced my work, and I see Tokyo as a unique environment in which these qualities coexist at an exceptional scale.

During the residency, I will collect visual observations through sketching, photography, note-taking, and painting, with a particular focus on the Japanese concept of wa (和) -- harmony, balance, and social cohesion. I plan to spend time in both urban and residential neighbourhoods, paying attention to subtle gestures, rhythms, and spatial relationships that reveal how people coexist with one another and with their environment.
The research and material gathered during the residency will form the foundation for a new body of work, informing future paintings and illustrations. Through this process, I aim to explore the storytelling potential of seemingly ordinary places and the ways in which cultural values become visible through space and atmosphere.

The first works developed during the residency will draw inspiration from everyday life in Tokyo, exploring moments where human presence is felt but not always directly shown: a bicycle left outside a shop, laundry moving in the wind, an empty bench after rain, a small garden between buildings, or a quiet interior overlooking the city. Through these images, I hope to investigate how harmony can be communicated through space, colour, composition, and atmosphere.