Wishing For Happy Prosperous New Year
2025 was the worst year of the twenty-first century, (goodbye, you sack of broken bones). Surely 2026 will not all of a sudden come to us on the wings of a white dove, it will be not peaceful. What will happen to the beautiful world we are so privileged to live in? Paranoid Russia beating the drums of ongoing war, the propagandists in Kremlin are cultivating their Euro-phobia. What ever happens it will be done without good reason, wrong, immoral, motivated by hate and more aggression. Profoundly Wicked Times.
Minimal Art
Amsterdam – Wet heavy capricious unpleasant dirty snowfalls this year. My cure for this winter: colourful energy. The dark months in Amsterdam can be very gloomy. As an artist I need a environment that inspires me, especially during the city’s darker months. This interior wall, build in 1939, was white and square with no real surprises. It needed a bright side. As a garden revitalized.
Pythagoras triangle
Peace of Mind
My choice of subject: no lovely blue and red flowers, but an abstract composition. Optional possibilities. I have started a new mural painting, with geometric elements, half rectangles, they are useful to mix the right colours in balance. That is what I do, I smash some colours on the wall and see of they match somehow. With Mondrian looking over my shoulder I am aware of the primary colours, red, blue and yellow, from which all others can be obtained by mixing two or more.
I decided not to use any red. Red would disturb the calmness of the composition, red would have an overwhelming effect. However, its an intuitive process that keeps my mind at ease as long I am concentrated and fully focused on doing work of art as a form of peace. Not in the naive sense of desiring world-peace by the force of art, that’s an illusion only fools believe in.
Doing this mural, its technically all about proportions and measurements, the correct relations of parts or the sizes of several parts. When I have to my satisfaction finally finished such a non-figurative work then I enjoy a particular inner peace of mind.
Intensely Colorful Yellow
I know, this hue bright yellow fits perfectly in a gallery space but at home where you will have your breakfast it can be too much, every morning this attack on the eyes.
Connotations Of The Triangle
detail of the mural, here slightly off charts is one of the six basic visual elements of geometry, the triangle, this form has been selected in classic symbolism related to religion, triangle point up means male power (fallus) point down means female power (vagina), loosely interpreted. It has no sexual connotation. The triangle is purely objective basic element.
Pythagoras and Fibonacci
How to finish this work? My question right now: Am I going to work on the leftover spaces of the rectangles, doing the thing that is quite obvious? The Pythagoras triangle can easily be transformed into the Fibonacci triangles that moves the lines in different corners and angles. The Fibonacci formulae is the cornerstone of geometric minimalism. Most likely I will continue in the spirit of Fibonacci. But not undoubtedly. Maybe I am a going to fly a little and introduce the shape of sensual curves in the frames, in the style of Kelly. Or, third option: leave it as it is, in favour of the nature of minimalism?
fibonacci triagles
Working Process
I do not work according to a specific system. Intuition is my creative guide. nothing is mathematically predetermined although I have developed a compositional method, which is working in stages and variations. the process of reworking, rethinking and refining that’s what I like the most.
Conscious Studio Strategy
detail of the mural before I repurposed my motif to go along with yellow as dominant background, also I am not sure about the scale of the mural, maybe I have to adjust the sizes of the elements. Although in control and feeling overly safe I always want to challenge myself, operate across a fuller spectrum, to move deeper in the mural as a painting, in the end its all about getting it together.