Antoon Knaap

Born in 1960's Amsterdam, Antoon Knaap grew up in tumultuous times. The cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s made Amsterdam the magical centre of Europe. Following a career in finance, he moved to Ireland early 1990's where he started his own business and became an avid woodworker. In the aftermath of the economic crisis he moved to Spain, where helped by the sun he rediscovered his love for painting. End 2014 he returned to Ireland. Guess the rain was more appealing than the sun....
Currently based in Maynooth, in the Republic of Ireland, Antoon Knaap is a visual artist who makes figurative art from the head and abstract art from the heart. Over the years his figurative and abstract work has increasingly been bleeding into each other, leaving us with an expectation of things to come. Interpolating and blending the lines from his historical figurative work and his abstract geometric leads us towards a future of more conceptual abstract while historical. Time will tell.
Working with acrylic paint embellished with spray paint, Knaap visually expresses encounters between past events and the moment they are translated to the canvas. He often uses geometrical shapes that include circles, rectangles and others to represent chann...