13 maart 2015

Art

For me art is a craft. Only the result is important. Like writing a novel is a craft, or composing a peace of music. The reader and the listener judge. 
Only in craft my painting and drawing can flourish. Like a tree that settles in the earth, to grow big, to be able to bloom and bear fruit, strong against hot summers and cold winter frost.

It takes time to learn a craft. When I left art school I thought I had learned the craft of making Art... People made me believe I did. But they where wrong. It all still had begun. It had to evolve, to be explored, had to ripen. Still after a lifetime it does. Fortunately.  

My drawing is about the right paper, pencils or pastels. My painting is about paint and brushes. Some of my brushes are so worn out, that they surprise me. The worst pencils can have just the right expression. At first I learned to master oil paint and now I use acrylic because it allows me to work fast, to be able to catch the moment.

I work in projects. Then I tend to work from breakfast to dinner at 6, with a pot of tea next to me. In an utmost concentration. One painting can be a project. But a topic can be a project also. I did this cello project for instance, with only one girl and one cello, in about 40 paintings and drawings:

Cello Project 1999.  Bach's Cello Suite 1 and 3.  Oil on Canvas 100 x 150 cm.
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here where long periods I could not paint. And there where periods I painted like in a storm, finishing good works in only a few days,  or a week. But sometimes it also took at least a year to finish a painting. 
Before I can consider a painting to be ready it has to stand facing the wall for some time, so that it cannot be seen. When I paint I am inside the painting and sometimes cannot look at it from outside. To be able to look at it I have to leave the painting, step out of it and try to be objective. 
I am the things I paint. I am the animal, the person, the landscape. And for me an animal is a person, is its own entity, in our universe that we share with all entities. I feel the vibrations of life. The beauty of it, touching on romance almost. This is what inspires me. This is what keeps me going.

Sure, I have been exhibiting in galleries and 'important places', spoke to 'important people'. But I tend to forget about it. It was important at that time. But now it is no more, really it is not. So I will not tell you about it, those places, those people... They are the past. Now is now. A new day starts every day. I need that space to be creative. You judge my work... if it brings you something? That is what matters, if it brings you something.

I am not the painting, I am the painter...



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Stella.


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