Spotlight

Where are you going? What will be your next journey?

Your life is also a journey. Where is your life going? What turns will you take? Will you go right, will you go left, or will you go straight on? These are choices you must make.

Sometimes you make the wrong choice, sometimes the right one. Sometimes you have things under control, sometimes there are unexpected events.

My journey started in Apeldoorn, where I was born. When I was two years old, I moved with my parents to the beautiful Land of Maas and Waal. I have no memories of Apeldoorn, but it is the place where my journey began.

How my journey continues is unknown. Nobody can foresee the future, so how your journey continues is never clear.

When I think of travelling, I think of my beautiful holidays. I have seen many beautiful places in the world. The pictures in the background are maps of the places I have visited. The map on the car is of Apeldoorn. That's where the journey started for me and who knows where it will go next.

Autism, you are born with it. Sometimes you are not aware that you have a (mild) form of autism. Often you only find out when a few things have happened that you have not been able to cope with appropriately. Usually, these are drastic changes in your life. If you get the diagnose of autism, it can clarify certain things, but at the same time, it also raises a lot of new questions. What is next, what does it mean exactly, how are you going to deal with this, what will change now that you know? Do you have to change a lot? Are there still things that remain 'normal'? All sorts of things go through your mind.

As far as possible, I try to depict autism in this image. Two printed circuit boards, both with connections to the same points. Both work in the same way (if they existed). Only one is very structured, and the other is more chaotic. Everyone can decide for themselves which board has autism and which is 'normal'. But the result of the boards (the functioning) is the same for both.

Unfortunately, I notice that there are still many unfavourable reactions when you talk about autism. In my opinion, this is not justified. With this work, I want to show that this is not necessary. Because whether you have autism or not, everyone is equal.

I made this work in response to the passing of an uncle of mine. He was hiking in the mountains. Unfortunately, during his hike, he suffered a heart attack, which appeared to be fatal.

For the people who are left behind, the colour has disappeared from life. You have lost your loved one, and you must deal with this loss. How do you go on without colour in your life?

His death came unexpectedly for everyone, and it came for me in a difficult period. I had also lost colour in my life.

In this image, I incorporated two of my analogue photos. That is something that I never do, and which I, therefore, find especially beautiful in this work. I did not take any analogue photos in that period; the colour had disappeared from my photography as well.

These are two photos of the same mountain. One picture made with colour film, and one made with black-and-white film from which the colour has disappeared, literally. When I made the two analogue photos, I had the idea that I could do something with them one day. For a long time, I did nothing with the photographs (taken in 2016). Now in 2021, I have been able to use them. Maybe that was predestined.

I scanned both negatives and incorporated them into this digital work. I lit the room as if the light was coming from above from the sky. The English expression for such beautiful light is God rays. That is a very appropriate name for this work.

I made this painting after "NY". Although the subject is different, the theme is the same: that of life in the city. I choose New York as you can see by the Empire State Building. I have been to New York in 1996, which impressed me much. Since I live in a small village, I wondered if you could ever feel quiet in a city like New York.

I tried to picture this by a homely atmosphere at the right side on the picture. It is supposed to express peacefulness and quietness, which is even emphasized by the painting on the wall (you may recognize a different painting I made, e.g. "Milkshake"). The chair turns into the busy nightlife of the city and its high skyscrapers. The sky is dark with a few bright stars to picture the night. Most cities have a busy nightlife while at the same time people are trying to catch some sleep. I think that people have a need for quiet at night. However, a city like New York never sleeps, it is very difficult to find that little bit of peace and quiet here. It is hard to find the right balance between the busy and the quiet aspects of a city. I expressed the search for this balance in this painting: the busy city is leaning over to the right, to the peaceful room, trying to find the peace and quiet it needs. However, it will be impossible to find a right balance here.

I made this design after having encountered several drawbacks. People who had a different perspective on life bothered me. You can see in the white and black triangles that these are men in suits who believe they know more than an ordinary artist does. Two of them have a deviating opinion. This may cause several conflicts. You can see these conflicts in the blue and red wave. These colors represent water and fire. These two together may cause the tension to rise. However, the white line indicates that a real collision will be avoided. Although the tension will never be too high, it may disturb your plans, and then you experience a serious reverse.

This painting is all about the dilemmas you have to face when making choices. You can turn this painting to all four sides, and every time it will indicate all four directions: heaven or earth and left or right. Which direction do you take? Which movements affect your choices? Do you move from left to right or from the bottom to the top (from earth to heaven)? The colours of the painting represent the danger of every single choice you make.

If you move from the left to the right, you may face the following dangers: you can make the wrong political choice, or you can move to the wrong direction when you are on the road (a road accident toll of 4 per day in the Netherlands). Of course you can also make the wrong choices in your life. The area between heaven and earth is also very dangerous. You can try to make promotion in the wrong way, at someone else's expense. If you are rising high, your descent may be very hard, which will get you nowhere instead. An additional symbol of the arrow pointing towards heaven is of course death. If you believe in a God, this arrow will indicate the right direction for you. However, if you do not believe in a life after death, you have reached the end.

I made this painting after the death of one of my colleagues. While I was driving home after the ceremony, I felt certain emptiness. At the same time, I realised that other people just went on with their lives. They did not know what happened to my colleague and did not experience the same emptiness. In this painting I try to express the different emotions. You can feel very empty if someone you care about passes away. Other people do not share that feeling of emptiness, because they did not know that particular person.

The white area represents the emptiness. It is surrounded by bright colours. They represent the feelings of other people. They go on with their lives. You must carry on as well, how difficult this may be. The little black squares mean that you cannot always look on the bright side of life, not even if you want it to. At that moment you do not feel the same as the rest of the world, you are out of that world. Because feelings can change rapidly, this painting always shows the feeling of different persons. Sometimes you feel empty; another time somebody else feels this emptiness, maybe someone you do not even know. But everybody will experience a moment of emptiness in his or her life.

Before I started this painting, I was obsessed by the idea of turning art. I tried to imagine what things could be turned around. I came to the conclusion that almost everything could be turned, if you just use your imagination. The subject of this painting is something that you normally not would think of to turn around: a cow. But I love cows, and I wanted to do something special with this theme. A cow gives milk. The milk is used to produce a lot of dairy products, like butter cheese and milkshakes. From the milkshake I got the idea to paint a turning cow. If you turn a cow around, it looks like if she is dancing. And when she dances, her milk will be shaken. Instead of normal milk you will then get a milkshake.