Lawrence Carroll
Youth
2008
oil, wax and canvas on wood
211 x 158 cm
Koen Delaere (NL)
Stereographic/Field On Field
2022
pigments, ink, oil paint medium and acrylic medium on linen
250 x 175 cm
Saturday, 8 July 2023
Koen Delaere / Lawrence Carroll
Saturday, 24 June 2023
Emma Peters / Frankenthaler-Newman-Hill
Helen Frankenthaler
Buddha’s Court
1964
acrylic on canvas
249 cm x 239 cm
private collection Mr. and Mrs. Robert K. Hoffman
I got acquainted with Helen Frankenthaler as an art student. I had been messing around with other media for a while then, dismissing painting (on canvases especially) as too rigid and antiquated. This painting I’ve only seen in a book thus far, ‘Helen Frankenthaler: a paintings retrospective’, and yet it has enthralled me enough to keep returning to it. It is just shy of a perfect square, with an almost symmetrical layout. There is a rigidity to the work, made lighter by the inherent glow of the blues and oranges which gives it such a mystical character. My own paintings tend to be much more chaotic, but the one thing that this has in common with all of my other favourite works (be it other people’s or my own), is that it seems to hum, be alive. It is a place, a seat. As much as painting has a long, and weighty tradition behind it, there is also such a simplicity to that canvas on the wall. Within those four lines of the edges exists radical freedom. It does not conform to our natural laws of physics, of time passing. It creates its own. She is one of the painters that taught me this very juicy truth. This is indeed Buddha in his court, the painting being both a regal as well as friendly presence. Simple as that.
Barnet Newman
Cathedra
1951
oil and acrylic on canvas
243 x 543 cm
collection Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Then there is the beloved Cathedra. Without meaning to, here we have another seat. It is linked to the biblical throne of God, and to the connection Newman felt with spirituality creating this work. Newman was not a believer in the traditional sense of the word, and neither am I honestly. I do not believe in god, but I love that feeling you get when looking at the night sky for a little too long. You get swallowed up by the thing above you that’s bigger and older. This work is monumental, it is lofty, and I find myself putting some time aside to visit every time I’m in Amsterdam. It even makes it feel slightly like a pilgrimage, but despite its loftiness I do not feel an arrogance from the work. It invites you to disappear in there for a while, join in the zips present already. There’s an incredible depth to the blue which starts to move, almost vibrate as you close the distance. You see that the blue is glowing, humming, bristling with red. You notice green bruising the space. Creeping up on you, the painting shows you just how dark yellow can get. There’s a comfort to this, to sitting with this thing that is older and does not let itself be understood completely.
Carl Fredrik Hill
Figure Composition
not dated
oil on paper mounted on canvas
49 x 64 cm
collection National Museum, Stockholm
Now to a painting I fell in love with more recently. I had the pleasure of viewing this at the Swedish Ecstacy exhibition in Bozar. Initially I was purely drawn to this exhibition because of Hilma af Klint (another one of my great loves), but, oh, the fun of falling in love with an artist previously unknown to you on top of that. Hill is known for the landscapes he painted in the early years of his career, and for the drawings of fantastical scenes he created after he became mentally ill in his late twenties. There is a great intensity and drive to him, which went unabated in the second part of his career. The strangeness in his works though, already simmering, exploded. Many of his drawings and paintings from that period tickle me in one way or another, but this is simply a work I want to bite, sink my teeth into. It’s so visceral. At the Bozar exhibition it was hung horizontally, and then while looking it up online vertically. I’m still not entirely sure which way is the right way, but both are fun to me. Horizontally it took me a little longer to figure out what was going on in the painting, while vertically? It is a landscape and it is so alive. The writhing bodies are clouds, the cock is a tower and the reclining women are babbling brooks. It touches something that is very dear to my own heart, my own inspiration: the idea of the imaginal being grounded in the material, and the aliveness of it. No either/or, but yes/and. It is such a physical and fresh example of this.
Emma Peters, 2023
Emma Peters
Eve’s Eyrie
2021
acrylic on cotton
200 x 300 cm
Emma Peters
Fecund
2022
acrylic on canvas
100 x 190 cm
Emma Peters (NL)
Untitled
2023
acrylic on canvas
50 x 60 cm
Saturday, 10 June 2023
Pietertje van Splunter / Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch
House with Red Virginia Creeper
1898-1900
oil on canvas
119,5 x 121 cm
Munch Museum, Oslo
The artist I want to highlight for Nothing But Good is Munch.
As a young painter, I did not like Munch. Much of his work I found pathetic, uncomfortable, weird compositions, limp shapes and skimpy brushwork. But during a visit to Oslo, I suddenly found myself in front of the 1900 painting "House with Red Virginia Creeper" at the Munch Museum. It looks like a simple depiction of a red house, a tree, a man. The painting is almost square, the composition felt uncomfortable. The man in the foreground has only his head in the picture, the tree almost seems to grow out of his head, the perspective is strange, all the elements seem pasted together. The painting fascinated and the apparent mess annoyed me. I decided to 'improve' the painting. I re-painted it a total of 18 times in different ways where, of course, I soon realised that this painting cannot be improved. It is precisely that weird composition, everything painted just a little crooked and 'dickish' that makes this painting so good.
Later I found out that Munch also painted this same house with roughly the same composition three times, earlier versions hang in the National Museum and in a private collection. He also clearly struggled with the composition. The final version in the Munch Museum is the last and, as far as I am concerned, incorrigibly beautiful.
Pietertje van Splunter, 2023
Pietertje van Splunter
House with Red Creeper
2002
oil on canvas
Pietertje van Splunter
Color wheel
2021
acrylic on reclaimed wood
ø37 cm
Pietertje van Splunter
Oh that color of your eyes
2021
110 x 125 cm
acrylic on canvas
Saturday, 27 May 2023
Jan Kolata / Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Schwitters
painting in Norway
1936
When I studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the 1970s, it was a time when painting was considered totally outdated (this happens quite regularly). I remember very well the question of a fellow student towards the end of my studies: Do you still paint? In such moments, I always remembered Kurt Schwitters in my defence, who, despite Dada and Merz, still painted en plein air every summer in Norway and also did so later in emigration in Norway (photo) and then in England, and earned his living with it. As a student I visited his grave in Ambleside in the Lake District. Later, Schwitters' remains were moved to Hannover. He was one of my artistic heroes at the time. Not only that he dared to oppose the main stream of the 1920s, 1930s – with all the consequences of emigration from Nazi Germany, but that he knew how to maintain his independence just as much in the face of the institutionalising avant-garde. This attitude won me over for him.
When I myself began to paint more intensively in the open air, a painting moped was needed for this purpose. I converted my Rixe accordingly (photo), and was thus able to roam the landscape of the Lower Rhine (flat) and the Bergisches Land (hilly) in a relaxed manner. I had integrated a picnic drawer under the compartment for the paint tubes – perfect!
It's been a long time since then. The work in the studio and thus the absence of the motif has made my painting more and more selfreferential. But you can still feel that I painted en plein air for a while. The colour in my paintings does not follow a programme, it always seems atmospheric, changeable. Sun, wind and rain are in it. Sometimes it is ephemeral, as if washed away by the rain (my connection to Edvard Munch, who let his paintings ripen in the rain – except that I use a Kärcher), then as if illuminated or punchy present. In painting, nature is no longer the object, but all the more a player and adversary in the process itself. Putting the canvas under water, letting the thin paint spread out on the canvas and find its shape - this kind of self-organisation of the painting works for me when I paint.
Is plein air painting finally finished for me today? To work outdoors, in the midst of greenery (John Constable!) - that remains a temptation that I will perhaps give in to once again.
Jan Kolata, 2023
Saturday, 13 May 2023
Rémy Hysbergue / Kupka-Marquet-Vermeer
František Kupka
Lignes animées
1920/1933
193 x 200 cm
oil on canvas
Albert Marquet
Vue sur le Pont St Michel à Paris en 1912
1912
65 x 81 cm
oil on canvas
Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe
Johannes Vermeer
Meisje met de rode hoed
1667
22,8 x 18 cm
oil on panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington
It's a desire for painting that is ultimately quite classic: a concern for composition, color and light. Playing on the different qualities of definitions: blur, sharp, hyper sharp. Enhance "unpainted empty" spaces. Find consistency in light, on velvet.
These three are among the most important inspirations for me.
Rémy Hysbergue, 2023
Rémy Hysbergue
exhibition Élégants Velours
Haus der Kunst St. Josef, Solothurn Switzerland
2023
Rémy Hysbergue
À découvert series
2022/23
200 x 155 cm
acrylic on velvet
Rémy Hysbergue (FR)
À découvert
2022/23
80 x 65 cm
acrylic on velvet
www.galerierichard.com/index.php/en/artiste/remy-hysbergue-2
Saturday, 1 April 2023
Helma Michiels / Joan Mitchell
Joan Mitchell
Merci
1992
280 x 359 cm
oil on canvas
Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 2016
It was in New York in 2013 that I first layed eyes on a work by Joan Mitchell (Chicago 1925-Paris 1992). I did not know her and it puzzled me how on earth this was possible. Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline were her friends. The painting spoke from the depth of the paint. Oops, I first wrote, from the depth of the pain. There actually is a lot of truth in that. These brushstrokes were made of flesh and blood, anger and despair, passion and paint, disguised in gorgeous colours. There is no hesitation in the brushstrokes. No wonder they knocked me out straight away. When I read her biography Joan Mitchell, Lady painter, A Life, by Patricia Albers, she became my great friend, in heaven of course, but still. A friend for life.
Like a kind of pilgrimage, I went to see the place where she had lived. On my way home from Spain, where I work during many months each year, I stopped at Vétheuil, a sleepy little town near Paris, strangled by the river Seine. A house on a hill, "La Tour", with a cemetary as the quiet neighbour. It showed me once again that you can make the greatest work anywhere. Drive and dedication are more important. You need to "keep the paint flying" as she would say. I am really grateful that she did dedicate her life to painting. We need this work that speaks for itself. I do.
In 2016, Joan made me visit Museum Ludwig in Cologne where she was honored in a great retrospective. Especially her last works, made with the last strength from her tormented body, made a huge impression. These paintings are immensely large and strong. They speak to me. Make me respond. As a painter. As a person, as a woman. I feel them. She had to prove herself all her life. Because she was a woman. Her last work Merci from 1992 moved me to tears. And I realised, with regret, that I could have known her, if only I had discovered her sooner. Being in a private collection together, is the closest I will ever get. A privilege, I must admit.
2023 Took me to Paris, where she was presented by Fondation Luis Vuitton in combination with late Monets. A daring combination, knowing that she hated to be connected to Monet. But any opportunity to see her work, is a good one.
Helma Michiels, 2023
Saturday, 18 March 2023
Lon Godin / Barnett Newman
Barnett Newman
Who's afraid of red yellow and blue III
1967
224 x 544 cm
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
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