Jan Van Den Berg

Born in Nijmegen 1953, The Netherlands
Currently living in Eindhoven, The Netherlands


Painting

For artists painting is a way in which an ideal is pursued and visualized.

But painting and drawing are often, as a method,.far from ideal: canvas is difficult to handle, paper tears or discolours, paint is sticky, thinners are unhealthy, pastels shed dust, etc.

And then, aside from the technical flaws, there are still the intrinsic questions which repeatedly pop-up: why to paint, what to paint, and how?

Having to live with these antitheses is not the ideal, and solving them may last an artist’s entire lifetime.

There is an expression by the poet Bert Schierbeek which the painter, Jan van den Berg quotes with pleasure, because, according to him, his own ideal is therein clearly worded: “time and again wanting to say the same thing with yet fewer words”.

And “with fewer words” means then for the painter: painting images which are as ethereal as possible and wherein movement as well as calm, but also transparency and solitude are present. And upon viewing, the observer may no longer feel any contra- distinctions.

“Current and undercurrent”, the action and the thought, or the unconscious, can find one another in a ...

Academie voor Beeldende Vorming, Tilburg

Academie St. Joost, Breda

Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven

Apollohuis, Eindhoven

ABC-Gallery, Osaka, Japan

Derik Baegertgesellschaft e.V., Ringenberg, BRD

Metropolitan Museum, Tokyo, Japan

Museum Belvedere, Heerenveen

Several galleries in The Netherlands and abroad