Her experiences as a girl, woman, mother and as an artist were the main source of her inspiration.
Common themes are human emotions, love, relationships, mother/child relations and social criticism.
Artwork from that time varies and shows characteristics of different artists, such as Katsushika Hokusai, Willem de Kooning, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, Wifredo Lam and Karel Appel.
It often consists of naked woman, man or child figures, sometimes recognizable, but always deformed.
Wortel had numerous exhibitions in the Netherlands and abroad,[3] amongst others: There were also expositions and contributions of Wortel at various events, such as (selection): She wrote several Dutch collections of poetry in which her visual art and her poetry come together.