Lifeguards Painting

Jeroen Allart is a Dutch, Rotterdam-based artist. He graduated from the Rijksakademie in 2000 and has mainly exhibited his art in the Netherlands. He is known for his flat-painted works depicting birds, cowboy portraits and landscapes with a very low horizon line. New works The cold winter of 2015 brought five new sunny themed artistic creations to life. This time Allart’s new works don’t depict cowboys of birds, but the Baywatch-like beach world. Three of his compositions can be directly associated with the sea: ‘Badmeester’, ‘Badmeesters’, ‘Strand’, and two others: ‘Vlaams echtpaar’ and ‘Olijfje’, more loosely connected to it. Allart’s newest works remain faithful to his style of flat paintings. His skilful manner of dealing with paint leads to the creation of nearly hyperrealistic compositions. Looked at from a distance, they appear to be more like prints or cut outs rather than paintings, without a single brush stroke to be found. The 2015 works do not form a series, nevertheless they could be seen as one. The beach scenes recall snapshots showing people from behind. They are seen from a low view, so that the observer needs to raise his eyes to see the whole. There are no unnecessary details distracting from the compositions. While the seascapes could be found anywhere – although this could be also questioned, since the water in ‘Strand’ is not beach paradise-like azure blue, but typically for the North Sea murky-green, the Flemish couple is an accent that could only be come across in this specific geographic location. Dressed in heavy winter coats the elderly couple is well prepared for a walk in the cold strong North Sea wind. Olive Oil, a charactered from the Popeye series, is another reminder of the sea.