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theoretical backgrounds

Dear visitor,

After two art educations (AKI, Enschede and Rijksacadamy of fine arts in Amsterdam), I developed an interest in anthroposophy. I try to unite the best of these two worlds. My work is sometimes called 'magical realism' - it is about ideas but it is not conceptual. My goal is: concrete visual experience. I try to picture moods and thoughts, experiences and inner states of being. I'm interested in establishing things that are 'natural', an artwork should have some form of life. It should have a positive influence on one’s daily environment. For that you need to allow death in your creative process.

To me, painting is not just about paint, it is about the visual, about the way an image takes on visual appearance (by laws of colour, form, perspective etc.). I started out as a multi-media artist and worked with photography before I started to paint. Painting to me is an active form of photography.
I work with different materials and techniques, but working with colour processes is on itself immaterial. One can do this with paint or photoshop, but also by singing or sculpting. Working with colour and working with paint are two different worlds, coming together in the craft of painting.

Image is not the only issue - there's more to reality than imagery. I try to reach the subconscious levels via the visual, for example by working with underlayers. I try not to fall into the trap of romanticism (the beholding of imagery) - I try to turn it around, take all these layers and shape them into something good.

Apart from working with materials and techniques (paint, camera, computer) I work with my body as a perceptive organism. We perceive much more than we think we do, as not only matter is an objective reality. The way one’s perception takes on shape is a given process, an activity which one can learn to registrate.
Doing so, you can find out about yourself, and about the way you interact with your environment. Photography can be a tool to capture the given part of perception - painters used tools like this since the 15th century. Johannes Vermeer (17th century) even used a primitive camera (a box with lenses).
The active part of our perception can be captured in the abstract aspects of painting. This part of perception is actually a form of body-intelligence. It has several aspects: it's the math that shaped our bodies (projective geometry), but also the intelligence in the movements of a martial artist or soccer-player. One sees it in really good graffiti or graphic design (advertisements, illustrational work). One can use colour, composition, perspective and momement as a vehicle for individual expression. I guess that was the original goal of abstract expressionism. I don’t believe in the absolute power of creative eruption though - this is only the male side of the creative process. The female side is more technical: how to actually get it done. Using all the laws and tools available to construct a painting, and interact with these laws. These laws went out of use last century, because artists thought it hindered them in their personal expression. But people like Picasso and Mondrian did have an oldfashioned training in realistic painting, before they went abstract. Modern artists tend to avoid skills, as they experience hinderance of them. Being authentic as an artist is easier if you don't learn skills that tend to work on their own. However, mastering skills means not just to have them as skills, it's also the ability to get them working for your content. This can be seen as the art of alchemy.

I sell my work as unique works, but also as reproductions. Some works I reproduce myself (when they are sold, I make them again). It's a way to commercialise things and keep the price down, but also a way of approaching art: posessing an artwork does not mean: exclusive posession of a content. Themes can be done again. The theme as such then evolves.

Part of my work is theoretical: theory of colour, art and science, art history. By working with anthroposophical concepts, art and science become strongly intertwined. Science then can become a form of art, and art becomes a form of science (even when it's an unusal form).
One does research by trying to pose the right question, and create or receive the answer to the specific question. Art is maybe the best way to create knowledge. The head helps out by studying different art-doctrines, and by formulating hypotheses to work with. In terms of inner development, creative processes (in all kinds of professions) have my continual interest

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