Nothing But Good: February 2023

Saturday, 11 February 2023

Keetje Mans / Jean Brusselmans

Jean Brusselmans

Dame Au Canapé

1937

oil on canvas

150 x 150 cm

Jean Brusselmans

Marine

1930–1930

oil on canvas

86 x 100 cm

Jean Brusselmans

Les Mouettes (The Seagulls)

1930

oil on canvas

95 x 75 cm

Jean Brusselmans

Nature Morte A Leventail (Still life with Folding Fan)

1948

oil on canvas

Jean Brusselmans is a Belgian painter. What has got me transfixed to his paintings is that he uses his personal life and habitat, his village near the sea and his house and domestic environment as an inspirational base. The objects trees, birds, ocean waves, naked bathers transform through the direct brushstrokes and almost square form he uses...so it can become a world of its own...with strange proportions and earthy colors that still seem so fresh to me.

From what I've read he doesn't seem to like the art world that much and in great poverty he stays under the radar for a long time in the village where he lives and paints what he sees...

He is definitely one of the painters I like to watch, his works look very decisive and firm. Geometric and rhythmic even. But at the same time there is so much feeling in a painting of seagulls or storm at sea or his wife’s dress.

In my work my domestic life, interior and exterior move through one another and I really like to see my environment and private world as a personal base for my paintings. As a painter you try to provide your subjects with a kind of character or a soul at best and in this practice I really like to use strange proportions or brush strokes or try to reshape or use patterns.

Keetje Mans, 2023