Guantanamo Bay Drawing

Fascinated by modern time(s) and contemporary phenomena in our culture, with all her trends, innovations and developments, I gain more indebt knowledge trough both old as well as through new media. Via newspapers and magazines to television and internet sites. I fathom the era I live in: I catch an image and try to strip it from mystery or any kind of "˜spell'. From contemporary still lives and self-willed portraits, volatile share prices and the "˜united' Europe with her symbols, to the bizarre world stage where nothing is what it seems: to make drop the mask that's being held up. The paintings and drawings find there inspiration in the news as it can be received daily, per hour and sometimes even per minute. Often filtered, sometimes coloured and censured but always strong and powerful. What I ask myself as an artist is the following: When is the news new, in which form and context, what is its content, does it contribute, reject, shock? Is it that strong and dominant or is the news not that interesting at all? Maybe the last is not that relevant, eventually I determine in my paintings and drawings if the image exist or maybe gains a right to exist. Perhaps more important is how I can un-colour or add more colours to it, make more combinations, expose an ideal or a thought, renew it or see the news as an autonomous fact or bring up an alternative. Completely different from painting is my work within the landscape architecture through the company Paul van Beek Landschappen BNT. We develop with several parties, visions, designs and built results for landscape architectural and urban development projects, where not only the design process and design production have a key role, but the management process with all her participants, interest groups and all those concerned as well. What both working fields do have in common is the transformation of the living environment. This is an ongoing and inevitable process, everything is continuously subject to change. Still I am intrigued and captivated to take a place in both spheres to create: giving identity to people, events, experiences and things, so that they can relate to each other in a different way.