finishing/restoring old work 2 (academy days): our lady of the stars and the planets

our lady of the stars and the planets (own work, 1986-2014, 50 x 57 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)

i started this painting somewhere in 1986, when i just started out with acrylics. i was forced to start using acrylics since i had developed a serious allergy against all oil-based paints and their associated fumes already then. this in turn was largely due to my non-stop painting which for years took part in the same room where i slept (me being a poor student).

the painting was a complete experiment, in materials as well as form, and it didn't work out satisfactorily. but the result was intriguing and hung on my wall for well over a year until i finally gave up on trying to improve it. its merits were a certain freedom of expression, but its limitations were severe and i didn't have a clue how to proceed. i always kept it, hoping to one day find inspiration for a reworking.

this reworking took place the last few weeks. once again i had to cross certain unknown lands to get here. i decided to clarify some facial structures, and to simplify the background. then, using some painted cardboard parts that i had removed from the painting earlier, i cut out some stars. used palettes i tried in many combinations, to create planets. and i added seashells to our lady's clothing. i collected those shells last year, during endless walks by the seaside between st. maartenszee and bergen. (i will come back to those shells in a future post, but let me say already here that i picked just one sort, because i thought it would work very well in paintings. the surface of these shells is simply amazing.) of course, planets, stars and seashells refer to the traditional role of maria as stella maris (star of the sea), a guiding light for seafarers.

as in almost all my works, i find a great difficulty in achieving `the' fitting expression. most often it needs to be a mixture between some (soft) sadness, some contemplation, some compassion and some (small) smile as well. [postscript 2014: changed the expression once again, and added some hair elements...to make the painting more unambiguously uplifting]

the religious connotation is largely the same as in the `notre dame des anges' series, but i wanted some surprise and childlike qualities in the painting. i'm not sure how well i have achieved these qualities, but i do have a strong sense that it is finished now, and should be taken as it is, with all its history and possible shortcomings. [and it probably has a strong `outsider art' feeling for many viewers. i have decided to not hold back this side of my art, especially when restoring/finishing older work].


filippo lippi, madonna and child (mid 15th century)

filippo lippi was the teacher of sandro botticelli, his influence on his pupil is clear to see. the star on maria in the above painting refers to her role as stella maris.

what is an outsider artist? am i outsider in any sense? 2 (intermezzo in the miscellaneous series)

nek chand saini, monkeys in the rock garden of chandigarh (photo giridhar appaji nag y)

(continued from the previous post) from wikipedia on outsider art:

The term outsider art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for art brut (French: "raw art" or "rough art"), a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art by insane-asylum inmates.

While Dubuffet's term is quite specific, the English term "outsider art" is often applied more broadly, to include certain self-taught or Naïve art makers who were never institutionalized. Typically, those labeled as outsider artists have little or no contact with the mainstream art world or art institutions. In many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths. Often, outsider art illustrates extreme mental states, unconventional ideas, or elaborate fantasy worlds.

Outsider art has emerged as a successful art marketing category (an annual Outsider Art Fair has taken place in New York since 1993). The term is sometimes misapplied as a catch-all marketing label for art created by people outside the mainstream "art world," regardless of their circumstances or the content of their work.

well...it goes to show, i think, that noone really knows a workable definition of outsider art.

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for me personally, there are many situations in which i feel an outsider. and this is linked to mental health issues too, specifically depression. the way i see art and create art is a reflection of how i see life, society, nature,... by which i mean to indicate that art most often has a spiritual meaning to me.

i think much in our society operates on unspiritual grounds, to put it mildly. homo homini lupus est, dog eat dog, you know the drill. these unspiritual mechanisms are just as prevalent in the art world. and i cannot really bear with them, as i have found to my detriment over the years.

therefore, my understanding has become that i am in quite some measure an outsider artist. like i stated in the previous post, this doesn't change the art one pixel, but it helps me to embrace the direction in which my explorations take me. i have however no inclination to use it as a marketing strategy, for various reasons.

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here an interesting fragment of a documentary interview with jean dubuffet on art brut (in french)

what is an outsider artist? am i outsider in any sense? (miscellaneous 6)

well, those to me are valid questions, although it is once again simply a labeling issue (it doesn't change one pixel about the art...). the questions firstly have a psychological nature, for myself as an artist, to determine whether i would like to be part of `mainstream' art or not. and secondly, perhaps more importantly, they could of course determine my marketing strategy as an artist. in my case however, i think that both `outsider' and `mainstream' apply, in equal measure. try marketing that ;-)


notre dame des anges as outsider ii (own work, 2012, 35 x 40 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)

(repeated from earlier: the woman portraits made in this series share the name `notre dame des anges´. this is a reference to the `medieval´ spirituality i mentioned above. but the portraits are of course not a depiction of maria. they are intended as portraits of contemporary women emanating this type of spirituality which i find hard to describe.)


self portrait with artist eyes (own work, 2011, 10 x 15 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)

i'm experimenting with paint and other materials, but not in the karel-appel large-canvas, heavy-layering-and-dripping way (maybe in the future?). still, it led me to the following self-portrait:


the green glob almost wiped me out, but the giant red amoebe helped me to redefine myself (own work, 2011, 30 x 40 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)

(to be continued)

outsider art 2: adolf wölfli

much as i would like to be able to find the time to keep up this blog in a steady flow of thought, this turns out to be an illusion. the price to pay for having too much projects in my head.

snippets is what i'll be writing, just until my other blog `trijntje fop gaat op de schop' (freely translated `trijntje fop goes art, revised') is finished (see this older post on trijntje fop). and i also write a blog for my students, since i teach a course `image & world' at the unit academy in nijmegen -call it `art philosophy'-...time consuming.

anyway, here some pictures of works by famous outsider artist adolf wölfli (please read!, it saves me the writing here...):


adolf wölfli, london north


adolf wölfli, general view of the island of neveranger

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perhaps indicative of my own outsiderness, i have always felt a strong connectedness to many works from outsider artists, also from psychiatric patients. in the next post i will turn again to some recent own work.

outsider art 1: the outsider in art

perhaps i will launch a series of posts on outsider art, which frequently touches me. but the more direct reason for this post is my attraction to artists who paint some feeling of `outsiderness', frequently their own, frequently indirect - but how can one paint the feeling of being an outsider, if one does not feel this (or has not felt it) inside?

i recently finished a drawing which i started already long ago in 1993. below this drawing, i will post some really inspiring -to me unbelievably masterful- paintings by bosch, ensor, rembrandt, and van gogh - all from the low countries, coincidentally?


outsider
own work ~ 1993-2009 ~ 18 x 26 cm ~ mixed media on paper

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some perpetual inspirations that certainly influenced me for this drawing:


hieronymus bosch, christ carrying the cross

this has to be one of my all-time favourite paintings. seldom have i come across sharper depiction of la condition humaine. also, here christ is depicted as the outsider. incredible composition.

i believe the following work of james ensor to have some direct connection to bosch's painting:


james ensor, self-portrait with masks

further comment is not really necessary, i believe. but i would like to formulate a question that springs up in me: are we seeing the unmasked or the masked painter here? anyway, to me it offers also the interpretation that we are all outsider, because we are all surrounded by people wearing masks to us...with only one exception: ourself.

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then some self-portraits depicting -in my eyes- outsiderness in some way:

rembrandt, self-portrait

although this is a different self-portrait, i repeat from a previous post:

a self-portrait by rembrandt on the other hand i enjoyed for something perhaps strange; it gave me the following feeling: a man looks at me, knowing i will look at him-on-canvas when he is long gone and also knowing that he is a master far ahead of his contemporaries - not per se in skill alone, but especially in vision, in artistic feeling and experiencing reality, and therefore also in rendering reality - and knowing that i will appreciate this where most of his contemporaries lack the necessary depth of development of visual/philosophical issues.

vincent van gogh, self-portrait

one of van gogh's many self-portraits. outsiderness to me just radiates from expression, colour, brushstrokes...