The Artist

Born in the Netherlands I have lived and worked in Sydney since 1989. In 1998, after 8 years of study at a number of colleges in Sydney and overseas I completed my Masters thesis and exhibition entitled Modernism and Fragmentation. The focus of this paper and accompanying exhibition was the dismantling of painting into numerous styles and movements from the 1830’s Realism to the 1950’s Abstract Expressionism under the influence of the Enlightenment and an ever growing number of ideas and expanding knowledge of the world.  In today’s world this fragmentation continues.  In fact, current painting practices all over the world show little coherency or common ground.  We might refer to this as a global ‘individualism’. We also see much of the same in other artistic disciplines such as architecture and design.

During the late 1990’s and early 2000’s my work explored this notion of fragmentation which lead me to an Expressionist style of painting influenced by both post-war American and European Expressionism. However, after a period of some 5 years, I slowly began stripping back my painting practice in search for a more pure style which resulted in a slow transformation from expressionistic lines and shapes towards a more geometric abstraction.

In both my earlier expressionist work and my current work, living and working in Sydney has been an important stimulant. Firstly, Sydney and it’s rather chaotic quality influenced my earlier Expressionist work, however, my focus, as mentioned, gradually shifted to considerations of structure and the existence of continuous lines as part of the metropolis. The later inspired me to examine an array of architectural styles and designs which led me to closely look at such movements as the German ‘Bauhaus’ (Building School) and more influentially the Dutch ‘De Stijl’ (The Style). Both active early last century these groups of artists, architects and designers strongly believed in the application of geometric abstraction that relied on pure colour and form. Numerous artistic movements and ideologies from this period promoted a closer relationship between artistic disciplines. In my work I believe there is ample room for such ideas. I hope therefore in my future artistic endeavours to work toward a more ‘total art,’ integrating ideas of more than one discipline.

For my current work this means that most works are ‘open ended’ and are open for exploration into new forms of art and or architecture/design.