Franciscus Spaan

I am a Dutch painter based in Switzerland; during more than three decades of creating art, having started with oil on canvas, I have learned to appreciate plant-based pigments and their application to high-quality paper, in which I specialise at the moment.
This technique is an appropriate tool for art which aims to have, in one way or the other, spiritual content. Spirit is real in art, and in the art-works you see here, it has a strong connection to the object. This is established through a special way of working, aiming at connecting the spiritual with the art-object being created. This is possible through thorough knowledge and craftsmanship of materials combined with conscious development of character of soul.
Because of their specific content and mood, the art you see here, works particularly well in a space in which a contemplative, peaceful atmosphere is envisaged; for example a medical practice, a meditation room, a religious space or similar.
The plant-based water-colour paints are especially fit for this method. But also for the oil paintings the method of painting is largely the same.
These works of art are one of a kind, there seems to be not much like it - and so they fit well into that stream of art from the low-cou...

1992-1995 I trained in several disciplines of the arts at the Academy “De Wervel” in Zeist (now part of the University of Applied Sciences Leiden). It was here that my interest in water-colour painting with plant-based pigments was raised. Before that I had worked with mixed media, primarily oil on canvas.
Born in 1961 in the Netherlands, my earliest recollection of having an impulse to create art, however, goes back to about the time when I was starting to learn how to read - I copied a drawing that was on the front of a book that I liked.
Growing up in a grey town with low skies, but at the same time in a country with a tradition of world class painters must have been a good basis for developing the urge to create art.
Photography was my next medium, and I was able to show work at my first group-exhibition in 1986 - but I also dived into painting, and through these first years of autodidact creation I was able to develop my own style.
Some years after my training at the Academy, around 2005, I picked up the water-colour technique with plant-based pigments once again, and started developing a method which would take up the next years. In a group exhibition in London in 2008 I was able to show first results.
Spiritual subject matte...

The paintings, with sizes varying from post-card to 12 m2 (130ft2), have found their way into private collections in the Netherlands, England, Switzerland, Canada and the USA. There have been solo exhibitions in England (Steiner House, London), and in the Netherlands (Zeist Castle), as well as group exhibitions in Switzerland (Goetheanum, Dornach).
Selected exhibitions (reverse chronology):
2022: A retrospective in the Steiner Painting School in Dornach, Switzerland.
2016 I showed my work in the Kunstraum Rhein / CH, including many large works – the largest up to now is 400x300cm (160x120in).
2012 I had a group exhibition in the Goetheanum in Dornach, then an exhibition with two artistic colleagues in the Rudolf Steiner Painting School Institute, and another one in 2013 in the Schreinerei of the Goetheanum where I could now show larger water-colour work.
2011 were the last exhibitions in the United Kingdom, where I have lived and worked in Scotland and England for about eight years: in the Steiner House London, including a talk, and shortly after that in the Christian Community in Forest Row.
Around 2010, I made a series of oil paintings, and applied for awards in the London area.
2008 I had a group-exhibition in London where I was...