A Atolty

Atolty inherited the pseudonym from his father who used it to send his mother love letters when he was abroad, flying for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines many years ago. Atolty stands for Across The Oceans Love To You. The reason for using the pseudonym is to separate his former media familiarity from his work as a painter.
Atolty was raised in Curacao, one of the Netherlands’ Antilles in the Caribbean. During his formative years Atolty took drawing and painting lessons, but couldn’t go to art school, for the simple reason there wasn’t one on the island. On returning to the Netherlands (when he was 17) his parents frowned on his plans to go to art school, because, as his father put it: “there was no money to be made in it.” Instead, Atolty studied Dutch language and literature and English.

But after a few years, he dropped out of university, to follow that long career in the media and publishing world. In recognition of national and international successes he was bestowed with the ultimate prize for outstanding work in the publishing world.

During his long career he never stopped creating art, self-taught, and from colourful to abstraction with a genuine focus on conceptual abstract art. In paintings ranging from completely abstract to loosely representational, Atolty has relied on a range of references and objects—from his memories, emotions and travels in the Caribbean, the surrounding world, and even the medium of painting itself—to create richly layered mixed-media compositions, using paint and found objects, and all very much influenced by etchings observed in Indian caves in Curacao during his younger days. He stresses that his paintings come from a reverence for and curiosity about what’s past—his own and everyone else’s.

Although he always begins with a source image, either drawn from memory or from direct observation, his conceptual compositions are shaped by a multitude of factors. These include the size and texture of the canvas, the colour and constituents of the paint, and the marks that develop from a continual process of sanding down and building up different areas of (mostly) colourless colour. For self taught artist Atolty, every work of art has its own internal logic.

Like a modern alchemist, throughout the years he has continuously refined ...

2011 Private Viewing Amsterdam
2013 Art Fair North Holland
2014 Solo Art Gallery
2016 Art Zaanstad solo
2017 Art Fair Bergen
2018 Creative Art Gallery Hilversum Group Exhibition (Art & Cars)
2018 Art Gallery Amsterdam (solo)
2018 Art Fair Bergen