In a letter written in 1906 to poet Alexander Blok, renowned Russian novelist Andrey Bely remarked on Paris’ red-light district destination Moulin Rouge: “Naked feet, and thighs, and arms, and breasts were being flung on me from bloody-red foam of translucent clothes.. 
In front of my nose a stream of bowler hats and black veils was still pulsing, foamy with bluish green and warm orange of feathers worn by the night beauties.” His description of the infamous “Red Mill” strikes one as much more scintillating than anything the Post-Impressionist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec could have ever painted, but it’s this description that conjures the imagery of 29 year old Dutch artist Handiedan.

Handiedan makes wonderful mixed media artworks of pin-up girls. Why pin-up girls? They’re “a perfect combination of sexy, humor and style,” says the artist. For Handiedan, her art is “one big personal experiment in how photographic images and drawings can interact together.” It’s safe to say there’s a lot of interacting going on as the collages contain paint, ink, sheet music, playing cards, money, stamps, wood, rusty metal, doodles and whatever else she can get her hands on to help give the work a lovely antiquated feel. Handiedan has a background in fashion and photography and she says this aids her with her compositions. But the desire to create started at an earlier age. “I’ve always drew since I was young and it runs in the family. I always said I wanted to become a designer, a photographer and a drawer.” (A Drawer?! Hee hee) And now she gets to be all three. Love how she worked in Indian Mythology with a quintessential American Pin-up Girl in this one. Doesn't it remind you of a certain Moulin Rouge song? :)