Classic & Music
Studio – Teaching – Engagement – Publications
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Body and soul
A fairly modern idea is that a painting does not illustrate a story, but is the story itself. This starts in the nineteenth century with the Symbolists, continues in the Pittura Metafisica, gets its own twist in Surrealism and is continued in Fantastic Realism.
It is a reversal of order. The artist provides the image, the viewer creates the story. The artist does not have a clear message, but gives reason, invites, stimulates imagination and thus converts the viewer into a (fellow) artist.
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Studio Oude Boteringestraat
In the twenty-first century, the search for synthesis deepened. In addition to painting, art-related issues became increasingly important, along the lines of: how do you mix matter with the immaterial, paint with the ethereal?
Exotic music
Reason: in Arezzo, Italy, you can see how Piero della Francesco paints angels.
It naturally leads to the question: how do you merge the physical with the spirit, the earthly with the heavenly?
In other words, how do you paint music?
The ‘physical body’ became the female nude – and the Orient also returns.
The five senses are also depicted, at least sight and hearing are clear here, smell and taste are depicted in still lifes and the sense of touch, the caress, is invited…
This is how everything comes together, old and new, the second and third dimension, east and west and classical values in a modern light.
View on the harbor of Algers
And in between I paint family portraits
Saint George
An assignment for a diptych ‘St. George and the Dragon’ (2 paintings 160 x 200) for Staal Banking, located in St. George Housing, The Hague, will be continued with exhibitions at all branches of the bank.
Saint George is the national saint of England. His bones rest in St George’s Chapel in Windsor; a privilege that this chapel may share with 9 monasteries on Mount Athos, 35 other churches in Greece, 24 churches and monasteries in Crete, 6 churches in Cyprus, 15 churches in Egypt, 5 churches in Israel and on the West Bank, the Citadel of Allepo as well as 2 monasteries in northern Iraq, all of which also have a more or less complete skeleton.
Then Beatus (blessed) and Luxus (opulence) make it a four-part painting.
When painting nudes, it goes without saying that the study of the model is part of the process.
Graphics
Etching/aquatint: Centaurs Etching/auquatint: Harpy’s Etching/aquatint: Sphinxes
A few mythical creatures are still translated into etching/aquatint, but due to persistent COPD the etching art is now over..
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Italy
Pyrenees
France
Spain
The Great Panorama of Callosa d’en Sarria
A stay as Artist in Residence in Callosa d’en Sarria (Fundacion Cultural ‘Knecht-Drenth) leads to ‘The great panorama of Callosa d’en Sarria’, a report about an enthusiastic beginning and a sad ending.
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Classical Academy of painting art
On November 1, 2004, the VOF ‘Classical Academy’ was registered with the Chamber of Commerce, a few months later converted into a foundation. The ‘Classical Academy of Painting’ in Groningen will start in September 2005.
It is set up as a 5-year course: 3 years of professional training, followed by 2 years of Master’s study in a fairly strict lesson structure, but at the same time with a great deal of freedom for the (ultimately) 25 artists and art historians who have been hired as teachers.
Practice room
Theory room and computer workshop
The ‘Rijksacademie’ in Amsterdam offers its collection of plaster casts: a separate room, a ‘Glyptotheque’, is set up for it. One of those statues, the Nike of Samothrace, became the logo of the Classical Academy.
Glyptotheque
He teaches figure drawing and anatomy in the preliminary training and perspective theory in the first year. Also gives partial courses in plaster drawing.
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Organizes a series of events for the Classical Academy: in 2007 ‘Classical at 10’ in ten northern galleries; in 2008 ‘The Amazement of the North’ with 50 artists in the ‘old’ Groninger Museum – later the Nature Museum; in 2009 ‘Classical in Romanticism’ in 7 northern galleries.
Museum ‘De Buitenplaats’
Was a jury member of the ‘Jeanne Bieruma Oosting Prize’ from 2006-’08 (in 2008 chairman and curator of the exhibition of the prize winners in the Kranenburgh museum in Bergen).
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‘Thinking about books, the Tuhfat al- Nuzzar fi Ghara’ib al-Amsar wa’Aja’ib al Asfar comes naturally to my mind, or “The gift to all the attentive ones from the man who saw remarkable things in many cities and who made the most wondrous journeys”. Thus the opening words of a contribution in a bibliophile enthusiast’s book.
Other publications are mainly the periodical of the Classical Academy: ‘Classical Messages’ and accompanying material to exhibitions and articles in newspapers and magazines.
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Click here to open PDF: The Great Panorama of Callosa d’en Sarria
Click here to open PDF: Saint George and the dragon
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Video: Breaking news on Dutch tv
Video: Classical Academy
Video: The amazement of the North