Mandy Rietdijk was born in Amersfoort, the Netherlands, in 1991 and grew up in a small city called Nijkerk.

She has been fascinated by art since her childhood and has always had the urge to express herself through drawings and paintings. She especially loved making portraits, that passion never vanished. Her father was in particular her big inspiration because in the past he made a lot of drawings and paintings, as a hobby, which appealed to her a lot. 

Not only she was interested in art but also in design and restoration and, thinking about trying to make a living as an artist is very hard, she decided to study at Nimeto in Utrecht for interior design, restoration and decoration. But after her graduation in July 2012 she was missing something in her life: art. 

She moved to Florence, Italy, to learn Italian and considered studying art in this amazing renaissance city. At the end she followed her heart and, when she started to speak Italian pretty well, she enrolled at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze to study painting. 

During her studies her printer started to malfunction: every image and word was printed double, one slightly next to the other and it had a very interesting effect. From that time on she started to delved into print art. 

After that she discovered ASCII art and she found it very interesting that you can use characters or words to make something different. She decided to use that subject for her research of her thesis called ‘beyond the word’. 

Putting together her passion for portraits with word and print art, she found her own and original art style. In September 2019 she graduated from the academy with honers and the will to continue creating.

Her latest artworks are a mix of realistic paint art and word and digital print art. 

The images are made of words on the computer and being printed on wood or cardboard. Some of her creations are only printed, some others are painted on top with acrylic paint. 

Mandy’s artworks are very mysterious so it is up to the observer to imagine and interpret what is happening. In the mind of every viewer - as in reality, when we interact with a person - words and image manipulate and influence the person in front of us and create an image of the subject that is always different.

Her biggest achievements are being recognised as a good artist and having important gallery shows. She also wants to produce artworks that somehow improve people’s lives and to inspire and entertain people.