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Profile Matthieu van Riel www.matthieuvanriel.nl Matthieu van Riel studied painting, drawing and monumental design at the St. Joost Academy of Arts Breda Netherlands, from 1983 to 1987. His paintings have a great clarity of colour and focus on landscape features, such as the flatness of the Dutch scenery. Inspiration for this work comes from his many walks in heathlands, polders, and rugged mountainous regions, in the Netherlands, Scandinavia and the Alps. Some paintings are almost abstract, such as the Boundary series, started in 1998. This shows a figurative language bordering on geometry, using a minimal amount of paint. These paintings are a formal approach to landscape, to paint the essence of landscape, to be aware of light, space, immateriality and emptiness in landscape. He is constantly reducing and simplifying elements of the landscape, making them more schematic and conceptual, as well as much flatter. Van Riel allows himself great variety within the context of landscape. He also creates floor and wall objects, presenting surfaces of brightly coloured pigment on the ground or wall-mounted linen. Geometric shapes, such as the rectangle and the oval, predominate. Other paintings are precisely abstracted translations of his feelings and experiences during his walks: the grandeur of nature, immateriality, emptiness, colours or spatiality. Education: Academy of Arts Sint Joost Breda The Netherlands. Diploma of Higher Education 1987. Matthieu van Riel graduated cum laude. Grants: 1991 1994 1995 1996 1998 1999 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 www.matthieuvanriel.nl