I was almost 12 and walking with my grandmother on the main street in my hometown. We stopped at a bookstore's front window and I was held there, fascinated by a painting of a woman, a portrait on the cover of a very large book. I was captivated by the cool golden light that flowed over the portrait's face and chest. I forgot my grandmother's presence as I continued to follow the light. The paint moved through the recesses in the shadows, up and around the portrait's forehead and nose, and ended as glints in the eyes. I felt an overwhelming emotion for this strange new sensation of seeing paint capturing with care and tenderness this lovely woman. It was a revelation and what I felt was intense love.
A few weeks later it was my 12th birthday and my grandmother gave me a present, the very book: "The Complete Works of Rembrandt."
At 20, I moved to Holland and began studying at the Free Academy in The Hague. I worked in the mediums of printmaking, sculpture, drawing and painting. In a huge classroom with a wall of windows and a crowd of students, I fervidly drew up to sixty charcoal and mixed-media nudes in the course of a day. Afterwards, taping the drawings to a large wall in my Fisherman's House near the North Sea, I would contemplate them, searching for flaws in the forms of the bodies and also noting what elements made magic. Out of all that work, I would perhaps be satisfied with only one drawing [3].
As I made progress, I gained confidence, and with that confidence I wanted to make bigger work. I began a series of oil paintings of very close friends on a life-size scale [1, 2]. I developed a curious aesthetic and technical viewpoint: my interest in spiritual introspection combined with my observation of spatial relationships in nature led me to equate them with and create spatial depth on two-dimensional surfaces. To paint optically beyond the surface of the canvas, to push the shoulders and walls back deep into space and to jerk violently forward knees and carpets, is for me a sensual, satisfying thrill. This was my first step as an artist in correlating an aspect of my soul (introspection) with a technical element of pointing, i.e., and arrangement of tones to create a faceted depth.
My use of color comes about by my emotional and sensual response to people and to visual stimuli. Scarlets and sizzling greens could be used as a color scheme in response to an extroverted model, giving the painting a sultry electric atmosphere. The colors should simulate the light vibrations from nature; in effect, the nuances of the color should excite and "tickle" the eye, be edible, and leave the spirit intoxicated!
In a historical building on the side of a canal,
in Leidsendam, Holland,
I had my first major show.
At age 23,
I was closing out my formal art education
and embarking on an artist's career.