Latest Entries »

Peninsula

I finished this piece last week. Slightly different than my other work. Less detailed, brighter colours and with less depth. The blue at the bottom for instance, has the same brightness, the same tonality, as the blue at the top. That makes the painting more flat.

In contradiction to that, there seems to be a sort of horizon at 2/3 of the painting. But the white at the top…? Sky? (but why does it stops then?). And are we looking down on something, or are we just facing a pile of colourful blocks? …..

Hopefully I have the time to frame it and use it for the exhibition that starts at the 17th of april in Harlingen (beautiful town at the coast in the north of the Netherlands). It’s still wet (oilpaint), so I have to wait.

schild52

100 x 70 cm, oil on canvas

Well, my job as a teacher is, not only to challenge my students, but also to broaden their horizon. To force them to think out of the box.

I show them the picture made by Gerhard Richter: “Betty”. At first glance, they think it is a picture, a “photo”. And are surprised when I tell them, it is an oilpainting. “Wow, how realistic, great artist, this guy knows how to do the job”.

Then I show them the other, abstract paintings of Richter. Without telling them that these paintings are made by the same artist. They are confused. They don’t have the experience in “seeing”, to judge these paintings, to “come to a verdict”.

And of course, to enlarge their confusion, I finally tell them, it’s the same artist.

Leonardo Da Vinci: “There are three classes of people: Those who see, Those who see when they are shown, Those who do not see.

Richter1
richter2
richter3

chalk on paper, 25 x 32 cm

Natura 7a, 7b, 7c

tek27
tek37
tek45

Oil on canvas, 110 x90 cm

schilderij21

Oil on canvas, 454 x 380 cm

nachtwacht

Oil on canvas, 60 x 70 cm

schilderij10

At the river

Photography

Photography, Alu-Dibond, 60 x 40

forrest

Photography

Bethany was one of my fellow students at the artschool in Utrecht, the HKU (in the Netherlands). Bethany was and is extremely talented. She can do everything.

Draw, paint, etc. In our last year at the academy, she started with her “pinhole” photography. She made really small boxes with mirrors inside. And she made her own pinhole cameras, which she put inside her selfmade worlds. These cameras where covered with mirrors also, otherwise you could recognize them as cameras. They would become a part of the picture, so she had to disguise them.

With this technique, it looks like we are watching large en high rooms, as if we are in some kind of cathedral. We are part of the picture.

Nowadays her pinhole pictures are far more complicated. And Bethany also makes beautiful short animations, like “Red-End”.

Check  her website: http://www.pinhole.nl/pages/intro.php

AND

Check this teaser of one of her animations:

bethany1
bethany2
bethany3
IJspaleis pinhole wax
Working on the wax model