inloggen of gratis account aanmaken (kunstenaars, kunstliefhebbers of galeriehouders)

My pictures start from lived experience, a response to things, not ideas. Whether a picture is realistic or largely abstract, my aim is always to get closer to a ‘real reality’ beyond the surface. When I paint I lose myself in the object, and at the same time it dissolves into me; so when the painting works it embodies and communicates this experience of balance and harmony, of being one with the world.

I want my paintings to be alive and to stay alive on the wall. I want everything in the picture to vibrate together and interact, colours, light and dark, the rhythm of the marks on the canvas, textures that resonate and open up mysterious spaces so that the picture becomes fuller and more intricate the closer and longer you look at it. 

 Baudelaire described the modern art of 1846 as being about ‘intimacy, spirituality, colour, aspiration towards the infinite’. These are permanent values to which I subscribe. I also very much like Cézanne’s description of his aim as being to achieve ‘a harmony parallel to nature’.

My paintings of people and animals are about the pathos and drama of existence. So are the family snapshot series.These paintings, based on old photographs, clearly have a personal aspect that gives them a certain autobiographic intimacy. At the same time they reflect on history, and on photography and representation in general; more broadly, they are concerned with how we exist in the stream of time and the ways we dream our lives.

The ‘family snapshots’ are paintings that look like photographs, at first sight at any rate. I have also taken a series of photographs that look somewhat like abstract paintings (see the group called ‘The depth of the surface’). These photographs (17 in all) were on show during February 2010 at Galerie de Opsteker (see ‘Exhibitions’).