(1955) art painter
Français	English	Nederlands
I began to paint from the age of 17 years. In spite of this strong tendency for the arts, I did scientific and technical studies in the Engineering school in Aeronautics of Delft. After my studies, I worked during almost 20 years as a computer specialist in a consulting engineer's company, specialized in technical building installations. As a computer specialist, I was extensively confronted with the logic and the way of presenting of computer screens. This strongly influenced my way of expressing me in painting. Now I dedicated myself to painting in a more extensive way and I began to expose my works from 1996 in the Netherlands. Since 1999, I settled down in France. As introduction to my paintings one can say that my works are associative - figurative. Art for me, is art if aesthetics are combined with a reflection generated at the spectator. So the notion of art is not absolute and does not exist without the spectator. In my works, my thoughts are presented separately, so they confront. Computers are the base of this step. Operation systems of computers use a presentation of the visible processes in rectangles, Windows. These windows are independent but influence the user together and behind the screen, they communicate among them. It is not the contents of these processes that interests me but their visual presentations. They obey indeed very strict rules. Windows are oblong or squared, vertical or horizontal and can mask partially. Elements are inevitably rectilinear, of uniform color and especially bi-dimensional. The data processing is reduced to a vision which has resemblances with the limitations which Mondriaan used and which became the law for the users of computers. Millions of users of Internet know nothing else anymore. It is a way to influence the world culture, everything becomes uniform. It is the sort of mondrianisation that I hate, but of which I am inevitably a part. After working years behind computer screens, this conception, this way of making 'collages' became for me a natural way to express me. So, I used for a long time the principle of the triptychs (three combined works). Not with a precise intention, but because the confrontation of the paintings afterward seems to generate a surprising and unexpected interaction and the combination of the three works is more than the simple addition of the three. Quite as 'Windows' communicate among them, the meeting between the various paintings creates a surplus which I consider as the essence of art. It is a kind of creativity that the spectator creates himself and that constitutes for me the difference between the arts and the crafts. (So, explaining the meaning of my paintings is an useless occupation... i expect you to explain them to me). The contrasts in contents, techniques, colors, atmosphere or luminosity are a source of fascination. Of these confrontations are born new ideas. In my recent works, the various images are reunited on the same canvas, this returns a less unpredictable confrontation. I mix frequently the representational and the abstract. These two approaches are additional and necessary and appear simultaneously on the same canvas. Besides this approach, I am fascinated by the functioning of the brain on visual perceptions: the perception of colors and forms. The contrasts in the luminous intensity have an influence on eyes. The incandescent effect of sunlight on the retina is well known. The shape of an enlightened object remains perceptible after one closes his eyes. The original color is converted in additional color and the shape moves with every movement of the eyes. The enlightened object is fixed in time. The effect of the memory of the retina is present not only when one looks in the sun but also with a less strong light. In fact, not perceptible, it is always present. The color of an object influences the color of another object not only if they are side by side but also in the time. One can wonder what one sees... The perception of forms asks also questions. Perspective is an aberration of the eyes, corrected by the brain. The influence of the brain is enormous: parallel lines seem to converge in a point at the horizon. The brain corrects at once and concludes to parallel lines. Nevertheless, it is as a religion, nobody has ever seen real parallel lines. In the world of computers, one calls this effect IT (Information Technology): the perception passes at first a series of alterations, filtering and correcting the information before it reaches the consciousness. Every computer specialist knows that conversion is often accompanied with a loss of information and that the missing information is added according to a standard automatism. Straight lines, rectangles, circles: these are simplifications necessary for man to understand but which may not even exist; the too complex information gets lost during the alterations in the brain and nevertheless this limitation of forms became the only mode to think in the world managed by the computer. I wonder if this conditioning is bound to our culture stemming from classic Greece. I interpret these phenomena of perception of forms and colors in my way in my paintings. Architecture is also a subject which occupies me. I worked during years for a building firm. The utilitarian architecture nowadays suffers of the same problem as computers. Here also, Mondriaan and the other constructivists showed the road. Rectilinear, oblong, uniform in color, repetitive and essentially bi-dimensional; volumes exist only thanks to the oblong plains which give them forms. The efficiency and the capacity to generate money are infinitely more important than the influence which a building can have on the sensation of reality and history of the individual. The choices of materials are managed by the same criteria. Giant offices are realized in some months and after 40 years are often not even worth being maintained. Demolition is then the only solution. So there is nothing left for future generations. This way Architecture becomes an art very volatile. This was certainly not always the case. The contrast is blatant with ancient utilitarian buildings such as cathedrals, convents or churches. They are always there; they fulfill a historical function in our consciousness, feed our culture and memory. Even collapsing, they remain romantic moorings for the memory. The premature disappearance of our own buildings is not without consequences. A culture without tangible and durable history is bound to be eradicated. The reality will be replaced by a thought, a virtual reality, especially easily to manipulate. Communication by computers may be the prelude of a world which loses ties which one finds now unimportant but which can become very important later.