See some famous paintings of Edward Hopper “in the flesh”
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One of my favorites. For me, simplicity is not a main goal. But sometimes difficult for me to achieve.
I have the tendency to make very busy compositions, overall compositions. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I have to keep in mind, that there are many ways to handle a composition. And sometimes you just have to stop. An there is nothing wrong with that either.
Edvard Munch is also one of my NO heroes 😉
I always look at his backgrounds. For me, as a painter, to make an interesting background is not easy to do. Also to make it match with the motives you are putting in. Which technique does the artist use, to accomplish that?
In the first painting – the sick child, made in 1885- I especially admire the way Munch painted the cushion. The red colour of the hair of the girl, is sort of shining in the pillow.
In the second one, “Parish nude”, made in 1896, the painting looks more simple. He also puts a contour around a part of the woman. The brushstrokes are less visible. He is thinking more in “colour fields”. It makes the painting more “flat”. He even doesn’t bother, to give the woman a real face. I think, because it’s now more a matter of art and what you can do with paint, how you can solve problems you encounter as an artist. Then it is to paint a real figurative painting. And don’t forget, in these days artists had to compete with photography.
So they had to invent new ways, of how to cope with their art. What do I want with my paintings?
Is it just a coincidence, that Munch is also a painter from Scandinavia? Like Per Kirkeby? I really don’t know.
Chalk on paper, 32 x 25 cm
This painting is called “Preformation”. Not too long ago, scientists thought that the human embryo, the baby, was a tiny version of a grown human being. Waiting in the sperm cell. And just had to grow (in the womb of the woman ofcourse).
I also read a lot about “the Edda”, a very old book about the creation of the world (Nordic mythology). This is also a theme a use sometimes.
And explains the environment the sperm cell is “floating” in, in this painting.
Well, I don’t believe in heroes. However, Per is getting close. We both work with the same themes. And we both are real “painters’.
During my study at the academy in Utrecht (HKU) I saw a marvellous exhibition in Amsterdam. And a few years later in Denmark, in the Louisiana Museum. Per really knocked me of my feet. Can you cry, just by watching a few paintings? Yes, you can (Obama will agree on this).
My teachers told me, that Kirkeby is a “difficult painter, really a painter for painters”. I don’t know if they are right or wrong. I don’t know how it is “Not to be a painter”.
This week I visited the exhibition of ‘The late Rembrandt”, at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Beautiful exhibition. For me the most impressive painting was this little painting of “Baadende vrouw” (bathing woman).
His fellow artists thought it was just a sketch, an unfinished painting.
The loose brushstrokes of the white “dress” together with the delicate touch and de fine use of his glacis-strokes (thin layers of paint).
This is a mix of a drawing I made and a picture.
65 x 50 cm
An oilpainting a made a few years ago.
100 x 90 cm
Just started today, august 23, with this blog.
I am an artist from the Netherlands. I paint, I draw, I am a photographer, I make films etc.
Sometimes I combine paintings with pictures I have been taken.
René Heeres artist 
