Sometimes it seems like you can see better when you don't think of anything. I know some good places to not think about anything. Like you're not there. That feels just right, because then there is space. It also feels fine to have nothing to say.
Outside the city, there's not much to see, but sometimes the clouds look like creatures.
I think I just wanted to get away. From that idea that everything always goes on like this, working every day, in the same space. And of a studio as an isolated place, secluded in time and space. I bought a car, a bus, in which I can work. Every day I drive somewhere else and I make my paintings quickly. They are also very simple, as simple as possible. A studio is a reservation towards or a respite from the world. But now I am in the middle of it.
For me, it's new that I don't doubt the motif I'm using. That is because I am in the place of the motif. In a studio, everything can always be different, but there is no such space now. My paintings were often the result of slow negotiations, now everything goes one way, outward.
Perhaps because of this, through this simplicity, something else becomes visible, namely the fact that a painted representation is always a construction. You see the representation, but you also see exactly how that representation was made. That change is what these paintings are made of, I think.
text: Derk Thijs
Soms lijkt het of je beter kan zien als je nergens aan denkt. Ik ken een paar goede plekken om nergens aan te denken. Alsof je er niet bent. Dat voelt juist prima, want dan is er ruimte. Het voelt ook prima om niets te zeggen te hebben.
Buiten de stad is er niet veel te zien, maar soms lijken de wolken op wezens.
Ik denk dat ik gewoon weg wilde. Van dat idee dat alles altijd maar zo door gaat, iedere dag werken, iedere dag in dezelfde ruimte. En van een atelier als een geïsoleerde plek, afgezonderd in tijd en ruimte. Ik...
