Dick Van Dijk

Dick van Dijk is a passionate artist with an expressive style. His work consists of a dynamic interplay of human forms, existing within the abstract, through which he explores themes of proximity and intimacy. Dick compares the process of painting to collage: assembling, adapting, de-constructing and reconstructing. This creates fleeting moments of embrace, touch and other of sensory experiences, full of incident and surprise. Through painterly discoveries during the working process, he keeps adding new elements and dynamics. The results are layered images of freedom and surrender, close to the skin and seen through the lens of memory and expectation.

As a recurring motif, he paints group portraits with figures standing (…lying/hanging…) so close together that their shapes seem to merge, with blurred contours and overlapping limbs, in loose brushstrokes and subtle tonal shifts, making it difficult to determine where one figure ends and another begins. But that ambiguity is precisely the point, symbolic of the way proximity can cause you to lose track of whose body belongs to whom, where the self and the other become intertwined. Most of these works start relatively simple and restrained with one central figure, but soon figures a...

2022-2023 Drawing Inventions Academy
2011-2015 Fine Arts, Wackers Akademie, Amsterdam (part time)
2010-2011 Drawing class Maria Heesen, Amsterdam
2010 Crea, Amsterdam, Schilderen en tekenen
2009 Crea, Amsterdam, Schilderen en tekenen
2005-2006 Fotogram
1992-1996 Art History, Rijksuniversiteit Leiden (part time)
1986-1991 Business Economics, Katholieke Universiteit Brabant

2025 Drawing Inventions 2025 - Den Haag
2025 De Visuele Cirkel @ DeNieuweGalerie - Amstelveen
2024 De Visuele Cirkel @ Kunstruim- Amsterdam
2024 IJ Kunst Collectief - Amsterdam
2024 't Reghthuys, Nieuwkoop
2023 Doortekend - Amsterdam
2023 IJ Kunst Collectief - Amsterdam
2023 QickOff 3, Dutch Luxury Design - Buren
2023 Alphen Art event - Alphen aan den Rijn
2022 IJ Kunst Collectief – Amsterdam
2022 Mick’s Art Collectief – Emmen
2022 First Art Fair – Amsterdam
2022 Concours des Arts, Dutch Luxury Design, Buren
2022 Ruim baan voor de makers, Kunstruim Centrum Oost - Amsterdam
2021 Art Eindhoven
2019 #thejoyofpainting, group exhibition, Loods 6, Amsterdam
2019 Wackers alumni, group exhibition, Wackers Academy, Amsterdam
2019 Poses & Portretten, Galerie de Stoker, Amsterdam with Saskia Lensink
2018 Les Artistes hollandais s'experiment en Charolles, residency & exposition, Charolles, Frankrijk
2017 Schilderijen en sieraden, House of Arts & Crafts, Amsterdam with Dolores de Jong, Yiannis Velis, Ritsa Zervou
2017 Alumni exhibition Wackers Akademie, Amsterdam
2016 Schilderijen en tekeningen, Atelier Jan Steen, Amsterdam with Ritsa Zervou
2016 Alumni exhibition Wackers Akademie, Amsterdam
2015 Graduation exhibition Wackers Akademie, Amsterd...