Meet Felice Siemons: the artist who paints what she obsesses over (it’s herself)

Vanity and female sexuality still come with a weird moral aftertaste. They often need to be justified, critiqued, or made productive in order to exist. Felice Siemons doesn’t really bother with that. Her work circles obsession, vanity, sexuality, and self-image with a disarming honesty. She paints bodies she knows (including her own), friends she’s still learning, and desires she refuses to tidy up. There’s nothing performatively punk about it — if anything, Felice insists she’s girly, wholesome, and a little embarrassed by how much she thinks about herself. We caught up with the Rotterdam-based painter to talk about being vain without apology, being a misunderstood scorpio, her recent feature in Playboy, and why sometimes the goal isn’t to make a statement, it’s just the natural desire to be seen.

Hey Felice! How are you? What’s been on your mind lately?
hellur! I’m doing well. I’m not seasonally depressed like usual, so it’s been good.

What’s been exciting you lately?
Gloves, and Daniel Johnston.

What’s something you painted that you liked the most?
I’m very proud of my last two big paintings; they’re both portraits of friends. I have always made self-portraits and portraits of my ex-boyfriend and my boyfriend now, faces that I know very well and have a heavy psychological load. Painting my friends was hard because their faces are less known to me on an intimate level. They reflect my language and my world in a different way, they are more of a tabula rasa than myself or my lover. This is what I’m trying to channel more, to move outside of myself, because i’ve gotten so attached to my own vessel and my own world, it was comfortable. But I have very beautiful iconic friends that are very easy to have as models because they are creative and understand beauty and have a performative energy. So I’m very lucky and I can’t wait to paint them all!

I’ve noticed that you don’t really shy away from things that are considered “shameful” or abject by some, like painting your own (semi)nudes. What got you into this practice?
In my first year of art school, I wasn’t painting yet. Everyone got the assignment to make a ball. So I made a ball with extension hair that I got at the Kruiskade. I don’t even remember why, I think because I thought it might be funny. I started photographing me interacting with the ball, like using it as pubes or as a wig, or as a tail. Then I made a bikini from hair and took pictures in it. In hindsight I think I was just hunkering to think about my own image in different contexts or something. My friend Stefan really pointed it out to me. He said: you’re vain and you’re obsessed with your own image. Explore it!

Love how you were able to turn that impulse into something exploratory and creative, rather than letting it become something self-critical. Vanity is a big theme in your work – can you explain how you like to embrace, challenge, or simply portray this?
Vanity is one of the seven sins. It is really quite stupid to be vain, like it’s not very admirable or something. But by rejecting it as something that is inside of me, I miss the opportunity to look into it and to understand what it’s constructed of and why I am so drawn to my own appearance. So I wouldn’t call it embracing, I’m not proud of being vain per se or am looking to normalise it.

You stated you don’t shy away from “abject” or uncomfortable subjects – what are things you feel especially drawn to painting?
I don’t think I’m necessarily drawn to things that are shameful or abject. I’m not punk, I’m pretty girly and wholesome I think. But what I try to do is to not beat around the bush when I make work. I don’t want to look at something that I find beautiful and interesting and turn it into something else, I want to portray what I obsess over directly instead of creating imagery about it, or turn it into something more indicative and chique. I love fashion and I love psychology and popular culture. I’m always very busy thinking about how I look and what my physique and my face implies against my own world but also to that of the online world and the real world. So that is what I try to investigate. I really honestly don’t think much before I make, more so after. But I’m not sure if I’m explaining it right.

Are you on a mission to push back against ideas around femininity or morality, as a statement about body freedom or sex positivity, or is this just peanuts for you? Your natural state of being?
I do think that it’s very good that women are attuned to their sexuality, it should under no circumstance be suppressed or rejected. But I’m no moralist. At art school, people always assume I’m making feminist work that serves as a critique, and in this assumption I find rejection, as if it needs to serve a political agenda to exist as art or something. They always ask me who my audience is. I don’t really think about my audience, I just want people to look at me. I think I want to say nothing at all: I’m quite bad at taking on vast opinions, I’m always looking for the next truth.

Do you find yourself having to explain or defend your work very often? Are there reactions that surprise you, or people who respond particularly strongly (for better or worse)?
In the beginning of art school when I was just starting out I made this selfie book, like selfish from Kim Kardashian. They were just all of these random pictures of me with my ass out or crying, things like that. I was just trying to figure out who I was through all these different pictures with different angles and costumes and contexts. It’s almost boring to talk about it now lol, but back then people around me (my family, my ex boyfriend and some close friends) were kind of concerned and I’ve had some discussions, which was fine, it was part of the process. I also have never really identified with it super personally, It’s also just my artwork and through this distancing I can really channel it and look at it honestly. Now, everyone is used to it and is always kind of portraying me as the bimbo of the bunch when in reality I think I’m quite pg.

I can imagine that image can be a bit limiting perhaps. What’s a common misconception people have about you that you’d love to clear up?
I am a scorpio and so I hear from people that I come across as mysterious or intimidating and stuff but I’m not mysterious at all. I will tell you literally anything about myself 5 minutes after meeting lol!

Were you always comfortable with your body and open about your sexuality, or is that something you’ve grown into over time?
I was always comfortable in my body to the extent you can be as a teenage girl, but I was definitely very shy about sex and boys when I was young. I also never drank or did drugs. I was always just in love with this one guy and we would make out sometimes at parties, and that was about it for my romantic life. I was a very goody teenager. I think I only realised I was hot and could get guys when I was about 22 or something. Sometimes I regret not realising it sooner and having more adventures, but whatever! I think that the force of female sexuality has slowly become apparent to me, and it felt kind of like a revelation. I like sexuality because it’s something that is primal and exists completely outside of morality or reason. But it’s something very complex that I think about everyday, and I’m learning about it still.

You come across as very confident! Which is hot. Are there still moments where insecurity sneaks in? And for the rest of us, do you have any wisdom to pass on?
I really don’t want to talk about my insecurities online, lol! But ofcourse I do, and my wisdom is, I guess, don’t hate yourself for being insecure because it’s double suffering, but try not to wallow in it too much. My resolution for 2026 is outward energy. I think what helps with being confident is to not get stuck within yourself and your mind too much. My boyfriend always tells me to “throw yourself against society’’ and see what happens. That is my advice!

You also model right, does that influence your practice at all?
I don’t really know actually. It did teach me that I’m very self aware and find it hard to break through my ego which was a valuable insight. I always knew this of myself, but needing to perform in front of a camera with people looking at me really made it very apparent. But at the same time I do long to be seen, but I’m also scared of it. This contradiction is something that I’m taking with me in my practice.

I’m sure this is very relatable for a lot of women. You were recently featured in Playboy! Congrats, it looked so good. Tell me about the experience, and do you see that feature fitting into your wider practice?
Thank you! Doing the playboy felt more like a catharsis than it being something that informs me further. It was super fun, and the pictures are actually the best ones I have of myself I think (Thank you Wieteke <3). I only got super positive reactions from people. I was really nervous because I hadn’t seen the pictures, so I really rolled out of my bed the 5th of June and walked to a bookstore in Rotterdam and got myself a Playboy, and I got drinks with my friends in the evening to celebrate.

Which artists (past or present) do you feel inspired by?
So many! I love Co Westerik so much, I first saw his paintings and sketches while working at the Boijmans van Beuningen museum and fell in love instantly. He died in 2018 and they did a big public exhibition on him back then. I love Breitner. I love Breugel and Bosch. I also love bravura painters like Sargent, Velazquez, Goya and Sorolla very much. They just trip me out. It’s way harder to only translate select information to suggest a seen reality than to merely copy it. I just got back from Rome and was so insanely impressed with the sixtine chapel. It was pure insanity. Present artists that I love are Colleen Barry (duh), Salman Toor and Somaya Critchlow. I’ve been drooling over the work of a guy named Penkeeper on Instagram. I love Richard Kern. And I watch KIRAC a lot.

And lastly: what does a perfect day look like for you right now?
My perfect day would be: I’m in a hot country near a beach, I’m with my boyfriend and we sleep in his van, we wake up and drink coffee and have a pastry or cookies, then I paint or sketch for like 2 or 3 hours, and then we go to the beach and I read my book and he goes surfing, and then we hang out the rest of the day and my friends join as well and we have a big dinner and get really drunk till very late and it’s still hot enough to be in a bikini at midnight.