landscape art 2: recent paintings of canary islands

the exotic landscape of the canary islands has been quite inspiring to me, even though i do not paint a proliferous number of canvases.

i earlier posted a painting based on la gomera, and i now simply show two recently finished paintings. the first of these is based on a 2003 visit to gran canaria and has been waiting for some finishing touch for years...glad to see i finally found it. however, the colours are difficult to capture with my canon eos 300d...i will upgrade to a better camera this year.


gran canaria i (own work, 70 x 110 cm, 2003-2012, click on the image for an enlargement)



la gomera iii (own work, 80 x 120 cm, 2011, click on the image for an enlargement)

landscape art, van gogh, gorges du tarn

let me say just a few words on landscape art. it has always fascinated me, perhaps firstly because both landscape and art have always fascinated me. but secondly, my views on landscape art were almost demolished when i first saw a van gogh painting (i believe i was around 11 yrs old).

before that, i was already surrounded in our home by paintings of kenyan landscape as a backdrop for kenyan wildlife, by peter pakara (pseudonym of an artist who i barely managed to find on internet as peter siegfried hahn). i admired these paintings greatly.


peter pakara (peter siegfried hahn) (unknown title and date, i believe this to be fair use of the image; the paintings in my parents' possession are all from the seventies)

as a child i already had visited the rijksmuseum a number of times through my primary school in amsterdam. but i don' recall seeing a van gogh there. in short, my idea of what painting was changed completely (i now believe) when i first saw works by van gogh.

unfortunately i don't remember which of his works i actually saw first, but i do recall the sensation of being in complete awe of something another human has made. not like the awe i had before for realistic works of art, but on a wholly new level, the awe that somebody had actually managed to paint something of what i always felt when being in nature.


vincent van gogh wheat field with cypresses (1889, click on the image for an enlargement)

ok, now for my own puny contribution to this post's imagery. three years ago i visited the gorgeous gorges du tarn:


st georges de levejac, gorges du tarn

and some time later i made this drainting:


gorges du tarn (own work, 21 x 30 cm, 2009, click on the image for an enlargement)

(to be continued)

art of dance 2: some dance drawings

dance - three figures (cash ledger) (own work, 1987, 20 x 24 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)

the above drawing is one of a series of +- 1500 dance sketches that i made from 1987-1992, in a dancing called 'extase' in nijmegen (colourful to say the least, with excellent music and sound quality).

below some more recent dance drawings...to be added to later, since i have to (re)digitalize a large number of drawings, which is a time-consuming effort.


kneeling man in motion (own work, 2011, 20 x 22 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)


dance, woman (own work, 2011, 21 x 30 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)


dance, 3 figures 0045 (own work, 2011, 21 x 24 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)


dance, couple (own work, 2003, 32 x 48 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)


dancing couple (own work, 2011, 28 x 20 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)

art of dance, pina bausch, dance of life

youtube compilation of wim wenders' movie pina: dance dance otherwise we are lost. the music is by jun miyake, the song is called 'lilies of the valley' and features prominently in the movie.

this movie about dancer /choreographer pina bausch is absolutely stunning. it reflects the previous post on gauguin, since clearly pina tried to approach gauguin's questions through dance.

dance is a very special visual art form, to me. i do not always appreciate it, but i do agree with pina: dance dance otherwise we are lost. many of my drawings are about dance in some way. the two drawings below are a philosophical approach to dance and life.


dance of life i (own work, 2011, 32 x 48 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)


dance of life ii (own work, 2011, 32 x 48 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)

art on life (gauguin; tree of life)

i intend this blog to contain more than pictures of my work...but i have been lagging behind so much in putting works on the web, that i'm tempted to create a large number of posts just to show drawings, paintings, sculptures which ideally should be findable on the web.

however, a better (although more laborious) way is to present some of my inspirations as well.

one work by paul gauguin has always been of special interest to me:



paul gauguin, where do we come from * what are we * where are we going

the work is so philosophical, through its title, which puts the painting in a perspective different from most paintings of humans in a spatial setting. these three questions, albeit originally put to gauguin by a clerical teacher, are still quite unanswerable today, as far as i can tell, and probably never will be.

call it the mystery of life, i don't know, but it is an inspiration to me nonetheless:


tree of life (own work, 2012, 32 x 48 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)

young woman in pink dress (new work, new directions)

young woman in pink dress (own work, 2012, 50 x 76 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)

this painting is new in more than the sense of being just finished. i'm working in new directions, actually i'm looking for a new way of painting people.

this because i realize that i want to depict human relations, human feelings, etc. from a very personal point of view. so it's time to develop that point of view, and for this i need to experiment with various forms of realism as well. but never for the sake of realism, but simply because i now feel the need for Form in a way that i have not felt before. so i'm actually willing to also go into clumsiness, childlike style, whatever, if it gets across what i want to get across. (also see the previous post!)

strangely enough, i discovered that my sense of 3D form has only improved during the past years, even though i haven't been practising on it in any way. however, i'm also using some new techniques, in fact i want to incorporate my drawing styles and skills into my paintings...since in drawing i am the most free. the result in this painting can be seen mostly in the facial features, where i drew as well as painted.

also in this case the background/foreground colour contrasts were resolved with the glazing techniques discussed in the previous posts. 3D is only barely suggested, but that is how i think it should be here. naturally, i also drew on many inspirations from portrait art history.

the artist is always naked (finishing really old work 2)

the artist is always naked (own work, 1982-2012, 45 x 90 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)

this painting is one of a number of really old works (in this case also 30 years old) that i have decided to finish, using the techniques which i have acquired in the meantime.

actually for this painting techniques came second. it was the image itself which was hard to realize. finally i decided to depict a theme which has been on my mind for many years. and which is also a theme which i discuss with my students.

namely this: any artist, in any field (music, painting, writing,...), always has to put so much of her/himself in his/her art, that it is similar to standing naked before an audience. any small hesitation/mistake/clumsiness/... in music/singing/drama/art/... is picked up immediately by the acute human ears and eyes of the audience. so let alone that one can keep one's personality covered, one's inner drive, one's demons and desires and also one's inner beauty of course.

the audience most frequently doesn't realize how hard this can be for artists, who are generally not the least sensitive of people. still, i tell my students that it goes with the job, and that they should find ways to cope, preferably NOT by trying to keep themselves covered...since that is a strategy which will hamper them to develop their own truly unique talent.