Perseverance - Limited Edition 1 of 27 Print

Rob de Graaf (The Hague, 1960) considers his work primarily as a research. Methods, mains and (especially) the process of painting are important. His abstract paintings and drawings form the imagination of this process. Inspiration As regards content my ‘search’ is driven by my fascination for opposites. And more important; how do these opposites interact? In the previous years, while maintaining the opposites in my paintings, I was looking for synthesis, unity and balance in one image. A recurring theme was ‘chaos & order’. At a given moment for me ‘chaos & order’ were no longer incompatible. I looked at them as two forces, which cannot exist without each other. Chaos appeared to me not as a lack of order, but as simplicity hidden behind complexity. A dynamic process that powered by awareness leads to order. For me, chaos is rhythm. Since a few years I have the idea that antagonisms in fact not at all or hardly exist. In other words, the constant attention to opposites is just keeping me off from the experience of unity. Everything in our lives can be experienced as one (not two or non-dual). Now I consider opposites as a matter of perception. It is eventually my frame of reference that stipulates reality. My paintings are in essence self-portraits. Language Exploring my goals and using texture, color, form and composition I developed my own ‘language’. In my ‘language’ a form, line or dot cannot be seen on their own. Esthetism of the composition is primarily not my goal as well. Much more important I consider the balance between the one form and the other, the way they relate and interact with each other. Form I paint on square canvases in different formats. A square doesn’t give direction and focuses the attention of the observer. With this canvases lying flat on the floor of my studio I paint both spontaneously as well as very consciously. In my process the separation between consciously and unconsciously is weakening. Until recently I painted usually with ‘ordinary’ decorator’s paint (alkyd). This type of paint is slow, and yet it has a more or less fixed form. It flows and carries on running even after the paint has been applied. That’s why this paint, in contrast to regular oil paint, fits very well with my way of working. Besides brushes I use other appliances for painting (hairdryer, paint stripper, gas burner, sticks, trowels, etc.).