Promise Painting

I was born in Drachten in the north of the Netherlands, studied philosophy in Groningen and painting at the art academy in Enschede. Since then I work and live in Amsterdam. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- The pictures must originate from film stills and television images, photography. In movies often the landscape is a character too, as is obvious is westerns, likewise in art movements like Romanticism or Symbolism. In my symbolically layered work I make use of the landscape’s suggestive meaning; the contemporary, manufactured landscape in which isolated construction (fences, houses or roads) represents human endeavour. Shown in perspective, always looking slightly from the side, painted in subdued colors. There is no "reality", there are only metaphors. Titles of the works, derived from imagery and lyrics of songs, emphasize this. The paintings refer to the melancholy of forlorn dreams, lost ideals. The work has a romantic as well as an ironic side, is both reflective and lyrical.