Intersection-1 Painting

I was 17 years old when I traveled on a cargo ship from Rotterdam to Brazil and later also to New York, just as my fellow country man, the great modern artist Willem de Kooning had done long before. A few years later I emigrated to California, where I studied art and architecture at the University of California in Berkeley. In the early years when I worked as an artist in California, artistic influence came from artists belonging to the New York school of American abstract art - Rothko, Pollock, De Kooning, and Californian artists such as Sam Francis and Richard Diebenkorn, later Brice Marden... I was attracted by their ideas, style of work, and perhaps more importantly, by their vital energy and inspiring self-confidence. Furthermore, I admired the impressionist artists, the Russian constructivists, different art traditions and, of course, my personal contacts and experiences matter. In terms of motivation, meaning and spirit, I owe some gratitude to indigenous Native Indians who I met during my extensive travels in the American South-West, Mexico, Peru and other places. Some of their cultural traditions have inspired me in a fundamental way. I have always treasured these encounters and conversations. Also, the keen observer of my work would be right in noticing a certain affinity with the aesthetic sensibilities of Japanese art and with the Dutch Stijl art movement, the latter having had a strong impact on subsequent development of contemporary art in The Netherlands I live and work in Amsterdam