Book

Making art is a strange occupation.
It requires much energy, professional knowledge and endurance. It takes you to peaks and valleys, there is no way in between. Because a work of art must succeed. If it does not succeed it fails, and what fails no one will ever see. In this book a selection is made from my work since 1990.

Not all facets from this period are illustrated, because in this book I want to give special attention to the relation between work and material.
The material used namely, plays its own role in the phase of evolution of a work. It influences the handwriting of the artist.

Pencil, pastel, Chinese ink, water-colour, acryl and oil have very different properties and each requires a different approach.
A 6-H pencil is as hard as a nail and behaves almost like a nail on paper, while the soft pastel crayon leaves a woolly smear with only a superficial wipe.

The artist must adapt himself, set the material to his hand.

My habit is to work with the same material for a period of time.
After I have been doing that for a while I reach a saturation point - the possibilities seem to be exhausted - and I change to another material.
In this book is visible that in the period of 1990 - 1999 different series originated in this way.
Whether this result is part of an evolution, or just a consequence of a different material, remains an unanswered question.
A book like this is the obvious place to illustrate how the different series evolved and which role the material played.

In this way I hope to have created an absorbing look-and-read book that stays close to the art of painting and close to the studio.