The Landscape Series
The series of landscape oil paintings find their roots in many years of travel and living in different countries. Using various techniques, I’ve tried to capture the variety of colors, lights, contrasts, hues and atmospheres experienced traveling along beaches, shores, pastures, farm land, creeks and mountains. The paintings represent scenes like a sunset in Scotland, a cornfield in Ohio, a beach in South Carolina, a pasture in Holland and a sky in Put-in-Bay.
The landscapes are painted using a special technique that creates a unique structure in the thick layers of oil paint. The structure provides a sharpness and sense of detail to the otherwise abstract and somewhat impressionistic image. It also amplifies the vibrant and diverse colors. The combination of the colors and surface structures result in landscapes that change when viewed from a distance to a close-up – as well as when the light reflected on the painting changes throughout the day, bringing it closer to how landscapes are experienced in real life.
Besides the Landscape Series, I created large scale oil paintings of Ohio birds, abstract still lives as well as figure drawings and photographs. Please click on the links above or, even better, come and visit my studio by appointment.
The series of landscape oil paintings find their roots in many years of travel and living in different countries. Using various techniques, I’ve tried to capture the variety of colors, lights, contrasts, hues and atmospheres experienced traveling along beaches, shores, pastures, farm land, creeks and mountains. The paintings represent scenes like a sunset in Scotland, a cornfield in Ohio, a beach in South Carolina, a pasture in Holland and a sky in Put-in-Bay.
The landscapes are painted using a special technique that creates a unique structure in the thick layers of oil paint. The structure provides a sharpness and sense of detail to the otherwise abstract and somewhat impressionistic image. It also amplifies the vibrant and diverse colors. The combination of the colors and surface structures result in landscapes that change when viewed from a distance to a close-up – as well as when the light reflected on the painting changes throughout the day, bringing it closer to how landscapes are experienced in real life.
Besides the Landscape Series, I created large scale oil paintings of Ohio birds, abstract still lives as well as figure drawings and photographs. Please click on the links above or, even better, come and visit my studio by appointment.
The Birds Series
The series of birds in a snow landscape are large scale oil paintings that depict common birds in a winter setting. The winter-warm colors of the trees strongly contrast the bright colors of the red Cardinals and black Crows. The birds are motionlessly waiting for the spectator to take a closer look at the crude brush strokes of thick layers of paints they are made of. The dramatic structure of the birds make them stand out and changes color and reflection with changes of light.
The paintings are inspired by large flocks of birds I saw in Ohio during cold winter days where there is a good food source. Sometimes they are quietly waiting for their turn to dive on the food, other times they are fiercely fighting for it and then, when they hear a noise or spot a hawk, they fly back into the trees en-masse.
The canvases have a size of approx. 5 x 10 foot and are mounted on custom made hard wood stretch frames.
The series of birds in a snow landscape are large scale oil paintings that depict common birds in a winter setting. The winter-warm colors of the trees strongly contrast the bright colors of the red Cardinals and black Crows. The birds are motionlessly waiting for the spectator to take a closer look at the crude brush strokes of thick layers of paints they are made of. The dramatic structure of the birds make them stand out and changes color and reflection with changes of light.
The paintings are inspired by large flocks of birds I saw in Ohio during cold winter days where there is a good food source. Sometimes they are quietly waiting for their turn to dive on the food, other times they are fiercely fighting for it and then, when they hear a noise or spot a hawk, they fly back into the trees en-masse.
The canvases have a size of approx. 5 x 10 foot and are mounted on custom made hard wood stretch frames.
The Still Life Series
My Still Lifes have been based on work I made at the Royal Academy of Mechelen (Belgium) which was centered around painting of traditional still life. The BA course at the University of the Arts London (Wimbledon School of Art) and the subsequent research have stimulated me to start a journey to transform this traditional work into modern conceptual paintings. My BA dissertation and MA research paper tried to find and describe the position of still life in contemporary art. This led to the development of my recent work for which I digitized a small detail of just a few square inches of some of my still lifes from the Mechelen (Belgium) period, enlarged them to an enormous size, printed them on pieces of paper glued in a grid on large canvasses and painted the new image to create conceptual still lifes. The transformation has created a wealth of confusion and intentionally dazzles the spectator. Its contradictions are supported by the tension between the painterly freedom of expression and the paper grid as well as the supposed misfit of the title ‘still life’ with the unrecognizable wild images. The mixture of modern printing techniques and the traditional form of painting - and the combination of paper and canvas on one hand and ink and paper on the other - amplifies this. My artistic development has been advanced despite ‘copying’ works I made several years earlier; in fact new work has been created while painting over existing images. The digitization of traditional work has been repeated in the use of a paper grid - in line with the general development of the current computer age. The composition, use of strong colors and tensions in lines play with the senses of the spectator who is often hesitating between a close-up and distant view. |
The Drawings
In addition to oil paintings and photographs, I’ve made numerous drawings throughout my career. Drawing skills are important for oil paintings, even if one (like me) focuses on conceptual art later on. My education in The Netherlands and in Belgium served me well in this respect and taught me in a traditional way how to draw well. In fact they, in an accelerated way, let me experience how art and their artists evolved throughout the centuries which I use as the foundation of my current and more modern work. |
The Photographs
Although oil painting is my real passion, photography has taken an important place in my work. Often I take and use photographs to capture a moment, which could be to nail shapes, colors, settings, feelings and so on. To some extent they have become my visual diary or pictorial bookmarks as preparation and inspiration for my oil paintings. Some people use photographs as the basis to copy paintings from, but that is totally against my artistic beliefs. Art nowadays, in my view, ought to be linked more with the creation then the craftsmanship of the work. Since cameras have become digital and storage space on computers very affordable, I’ve found myself taking thousands of pictures in the various countries I lived in and during the many trips across the globe. Motor drives at 8 fps and video at 30 and 60 fps have helped not only to analyze the flights of insects and birds, but also to fill up Terabytes of hard disk space. |
The Installations
Here is a video of an installation I’ve made at the University of the Arts London, UK . Click on the photo to link to the video. It’s called: “Nature Morte” (A Requiem for Road Kill) The video is the innocent registration of an exhibition of photographs of road kill I encountered during my trip through England and Scotland in 2000. Under each photograph is the number of the highway each animal was last alive at. The camera follows the view of a first unexpecting visitor: the pictures on the wall, difficult to comprehend, confusing, changing the angle to avoid the reflections. As the requiem progresses, the pictures and the message become painfully clear. To all those who died a forgotten death. |
"Cureren" (Dutch /t͡surɛrɛn/ )
“Repairing the damage, stitching the wound as a symbol of hope of a recovery. The body & mind, the art, forever scarred as an individual beacon of perseverance, across color and race, never the same again.” |