playing and being

These days, art is so simple.
Everyone can make it.
And be their own artist.
If things don't go your way, wait until your retirement.
When you have stored your nuts for winter.
An equal right to individual expression.
You play the game of being an artist.

Or it can be very difficult.
These days.
Making art.
A calling or a part you play.
The challenge to rise above yourself.
More often a sacrifice than freedom.
You don't play, you are.

art and enterprise

It was like that already in the 17th century.
It held little importance in those times.
Craftsmanship in art.
Skill was not esteemed as highly.
As passion and personality
And if you were held accountable for this,
then you are vulnerable, above all.

Rembrandt knew his public.
Through and through.
Bankrupted, the genius.
In spite of the orders.
Until the very end.
Business lost to art.
Selling a beautiful form.
That's practicable.
You should praise it openly.
But that which is your own?
Shameless.
You have to be.

Just leave it to someone else...

divine nature

Spinoza already knew this.
God is in nature.
Omnipresent.
Present in all things.

Spinoza already knew this.
And before I could read.
I knew this too.
Yet without proof.

Spinoza already knew this.
The church and God.
Do not belong together.
God is where the wind blows.

Spinoza already knew this.
God does not look for us.
Because He is everywhere.
Where I find Him.

And so I went outside.
Not to search for myself.
But to paint.
In fine and poor weather.
Under those circumstances,
over which no person has control.
The majesty of nature.
I have learnt to see it.
And by painting her, over and over.
One attempt after another.
I discovered her divine nature.
And now I see God
and find Him time and again.
In the face of the other.
But...

Spinoza already knew this.

who I am

I feel I am a painter.
And yet.
I have little affinity with colleagues or with the art world.
I don't like to be among them.
This is of my own making. I like to be alone.
Some people find being alone difficult.
For me, this is no hardship.
Apparently, it's one of my talents.

I don't ask for recognition from others for my work.
Independent citizens buy my work. With their own money.
That is beautiful.

nature

I paint the things I see.
In nature, in a landscape.
If the weather's not fine, in my studio.
A still life with flowers or - sometimes - a portrait.
Painting scenes from nature is not an 'artistic deficit'.
It's more a way to measure yourself with all your predecessors.
With the masters of olden times.

framed

A painting mustn't be devised.
Fantasizing is something I have no appreciation for.
Neither do I imitate indiscriminately what I see.
I try to reveal its most innermost being.
How I do this - I wouldn't know.
It happens intuitively.
To the best of my knowledge, I keep to what I see.
And even if a painting bears a relationship to a reality, it will be different from ours.
Ours, in which we live.
A frame sets a painting apart from its surroundings.
When we look through a window, we look into another world.
Which is the own reality of that painting.
A good painting can have a big frame.

over the couch

My work awakens desire in people.
They buy my paintings for on their walls, at home.
In the living room, over the couch.
Where everyone can see them.
Scoffing at that would be ridiculous.
How would our 17th-century masters have survived otherwise?
Without the living rooms of rich merchants!