John MacBride Print

Born amid the restless energy of 1960s Amsterdam, Antoon Knaap grew up in a city alive with transformation, a place where music, art, and rebellion danced together in the narrow streets and along the canals. Those formative years, steeped in the cultural revolution that made Amsterdam a beacon of creative freedom, left an indelible mark on his spirit. In the early 1990s, Antoon crossed the sea to Ireland, ultimately finding in Maynooth a new rhythm, one that resonated with stillness, history, and the lyrical beauty of the Irish landscape. Here, he built a life and a practice that weave together his European roots and his adopted Irish soul. Antoon’s work moves gracefully between the figurative and the abstract, between what is known and what is felt. When calm steadies his hand, he paints using the head, images shaped by memory and reflection. When emotion takes hold, he paints from the heart, colour and form surrendering to pure feeling. Over time, these two energies have begun to merge, creating works that seem to hover between worlds: intimate and universal, structured yet untamed. Working with acrylics, watercolour, spray paint, and yarn, Antoon gives form to encounters between past and present, order and emotion. His canvases often carry echoes of Irish culture, landscape, geometric forms, and fragments of street art, symbols through which he explores connection, time, and the resilience of the human spirit. Unafraid to engage with the world around him, Antoon also channels global events, like the recent horrors in Gaza, into his work. Using his art to process the deep emotions such realities awaken. In doing so, his paintings become both witness and balm: expressions of compassion, grief, and hope in the face of turmoil. With his vivid palette and instinct for balance, Antoon creates modern icons that reach beyond time, moments of colour that invite the viewer to pause, to feel, to remember. His work has graced galleries, art fairs, and Dublin’s Merrion Square railings, finding homes in private collections across Ireland and beyond. In every piece, there is a sense of journey, from Amsterdam’s revolutionary heartbeat to Ireland’s reflective calm, and in that space between, Antoon continues to explore the boundless landscapes of art, emotion, and humanity.