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 an environment that inspires me, especially during the city’s darker months. One of my interior walls, build in 1939, was white and square with no real surprises. It needed a bright side. Colourful as a garden revitalized.

Always full of new ideas. My choice of subject: no lovely blue and red flowers, but an abstract composition with geometric elements, five rectangles next to each other, providing optional possibilities. I have arranged the rectangles in vertical position to emphasize the hight of the wall. This is what I do: I smash some colours on the wall and see of they match somehow as in a proud family. 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. The process of mixing the colours takes a lot of time. A matter of carefully squeezing the tubes, although experienced with this mixing, the result is often a stimulating surprise.

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.

Before I repurposed my motif and to go along with the layout, I double checked the intensity, very important, question is how many layers do I need to make me feel as I am being sucked into it. For each colorfield I have applied different amount of layers, 3 or 4 max. I avoided shimmering surfaces. At the beginning of the journey, when I started it, the yellow was too cheery, intensely colourful, the purple too noisy, baroque, and the red too blushing, dominant, I had to tune them down. Recast, such is the routine.

I am still not sure about the scale of the mural, maybe I have to adjust the sizes a little. Or introduce white lines between the rectangles to create a more spacious vibe, less cramped. Now they are tight together. Really, is that a problem? At this stage its time for clarifying matters, before the mural becomes like a scientific project and I myself the artist ends up, worst case scenario, in an asylum of mad persons.

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, arranging the colours in the right places. Balanced. When I have to my satisfaction finally finished such a work then I enjoy a particular inner peace of mind. And then it is exciting to see how the viewers will react, if they possibly will be overwhelmed by the mural, if it anyhow evokes universal feelings of ecstasy and euphoria. Excuse for my exaggeration.