Jeroen Eisinga / James Turrell

 

James Turrell

Installation view 

February 11 - Aug 14, 2020

Pace Gallery, London 

© James Turrell

photo: Damian Griffiths

 

 

I was asked to write a little something about a dead artist who inspired me but wound up writing about a living one, sorry for that, I know I'm subverting the idea of this blog this way, but this is what came up, and also, I'm very happy that this artist is still alive today, so here's my contribution: Not an inspiration but a kindred soul. 

I really get inspired by life itself and so does he. When I was 20 years old, I woke up one morning and, in my hand, I saw a strange, very bright green light. I woke up my girlfriend, who was lying next to me in bed, and I said to her, 'Look at this light, isn't it wonderful? She said 'I see nothing', and turned around and went back to sleep. And I just sat there in complete awe of this beautiful 

light that shone from my hand. 

Until today I cherish this memory as one of those rare insightful moments into the divinity of our souls. When a friend told me about the colors that James Turrell saw while he was sitting in the darkness of his solitary confinement when he was in jail I felt a kindred spirit had been revealed to me.

 

Jeroen Eisinga, 2025

Jeroen Eisinga (NL)

The Gift

1995

Super 8 color film transferred to digital file

silent, 2'50" 

© Jeroen Eisinga

jeroeneisinga.com

Lieve van den Bijgaart / Lieve Prins

Lieve Prins

Dance of the Maenads 

1994

photocopy art

180 x 150 cm

Lieve Prins

cover catalogue touch

2004

 

 

 

Lieve Prins (1948-2019) is not just my name-mate; my father learned the name Lieve through her, so I am secretly named after her a bit :). I recognise a lot of myself in her methods. During my time at the academy, her work was recommended to me at a time when I made over 200 copies in a short time and compiled a book from them. I strive to apply her same approach, energy, experimentation and research within a specific medium, in my own practice, especially in my approach to the bronze casting process. In addition, I am a big fan of her use of animals in 'Dance of the Maenads'.

 

Lieve van den Bijgaart, 2024

Lieve van den Bijgaart (NL)

Foundry wear

2024

casted aluminium

120 x 150 cm

www.lievevandenbijgaart.com/

Shawn Stipling / Richard Serra

 

Richard Serra 
Walking is Measuring

1999-2000
weathering steel
two slabs: 5,5 x 2,4 m x 12,7 cm & 4,7 x 2,4 m x 12,7 cm
Fundação de Serralves, Porto
photo by José Carlos Melo Dias
© 2019 Richard Serra/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Shawn Stipling (UK)
6am

2022
acrylic on canvas
75 x 70 cm
photo by Pete Hope
© 2022 Shawn Stipling, UK

www.shawnstipling.com

Jordie Rovers / Edgar Degas

 

Edgar Degas 

Portrait of Henri Michel-Lévy

1878

oil on canvas

40 × 28 cm

Edgar Degas

Laundresses Carrying linen in town

1878

oil on paper

46 x 61 cm

From the model drawing classes at the academy in The Hague, I often work with soft pastel crayons. Through this path, I came across fascinating works by Edgar Degas. The layered use of color, the striking perspectives and the imagination in rough touches of his paintings will always stay with me. 

 

Jordie Rovers, 2024

Jordie Rovers

exhibition in PARK-Platform for Visual Arts, Tilburg NL, 2024

Jordie Rovers

Patacon 

2024

195 x 175 cm

oilsticks on canvas

Jordie Rovers (NL)

Bakje

2024

160 x 130 cm

oil on linen

cargocollective.com/jordierovers

Jolanda van Gennip / Piet Mondriaan - Hilma af Klint

Jolanda van Gennip

Mondriaan baby 

1993

oil and make-up on canvas 

70 x 63 cm 

 

 

In 1993, I painted ‘Mondriaan baby’. An ode to Piet Mondriaan. The fondness/fascination is deep, for his power, his sensitive brushstroke. I look at his works preferably very close to the skin, they touch me deeply and I want to keep looking and disappear into them.

I saw the works of Hilma af Klint for the first time in 2010 in Museum Arnhem and I didn't know what hit me. I had never seen anything like them before. Large abstract works with a spiritual message. Deeply impressed, the work never left me.

Because of their shared interest in the spiritual, these two artists, contemporaries of each other, were brought together in the exhibition ‘Levensvormen’ at Kunstmuseum Den Haag, from October 2023 to February 2024. 

 - Jolanda van Gennip, 2024

 

 

'The feeling of being part of something much bigger than ourselves, whether we call it the universal, the spiritual, nature, the cosmos, or simply reality. Their oeuvres put us in touch with that unknowable whole of which we are undeniably a part.'

 - from Life Forms (p. 91), Laura Stamps, curator of modern art, Kunstmuseum Den Haag

Piet Mondriaan

Zee (Pier and Ocean)

1914 

charcoal on paper

51 x 63 cm 

collection Kunstmuseum Den Haag

 

All true art comes from universal source. It comes into being intuitively. The very essence of art is the visual expression of -also impossible to describe- life in all its fullness and richness.

 - Piet Mondriaan

Hilma af Klint

The Ten Largest no.4 (Adolescence) 

1907 

tempera on paper on canvas

328 x 240 cm

 

Those who have the gift of deeper vision can see beyond form and concentrate on the wondrous thing hiding behind every form, which is called life.

 - Hilma af Klint

Jolanda van Gennip (NL)

Untitled

2020

oil on canvas

80 x 95 cm

photo Peter Cox

instagram.com/jolandavangennip_painter

 

After 'Mondriaan baby', now a whole oeuvre further, I went the way of the matter, colour and paint, and always looking to transcend that same matter into something I don't yet know, you could call it spiritualisation, the unknown.

 - Jolanda van Gennip, 2024

Tanja Mosblech / Giorgio Morandi

 

Giorgio Morandi

Landscape (Levico)

1957

watercolour

16 x 21,5 cm

 

 

The harmonious, exciting combination of form and colour is the challenge Morandi sets himself with each new work. It is both a figurative and a non-figurative picture. Gravity, otherwise associated with colour, is suspended.

In the present case, the watercolour, applied fluidly to the paper without any preliminary drawing, is characterised by a highly formal - almost abstract - condensation of the motif.

 

Tanja Mosblech, 2024

Tanja Mosblech (DE/BE)

Garden

2020

oil on canvas

93 x 124 cm

www.tanjamosblech.net

Maartje Frenken / Odilon Redon

 

Odilon Redon

Composition: Fleurs 

ca 1900-1905 

oil on panel

53,5 × 49,6 cm

collection Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede

 

 

The connection with the beautiful, all-encompassing nature, the light, the flowers and plants is what extremely fascinates me.

I stand in the light and look closely at the plants and flowers, I crouch and see in the backlight the white, pink and yellow flowers. The flowers speak for themselves in all their universal fragility. 

My work is dreamy, playful and concerned with all that blooms and grows and eventually withers and perishes. I capture that with oil paint in muted colours, fluid and transparent, delicate and tenuous. Thinly painted, if not sparse in material use. The skin of the canvas vaguely shines through. I am a sensitive colourist (like the symbolist Odilon Redon was, with whom my work has associations). I like to speak through my paintings about emotions and concentration on what is really of value.

 

Maartje Frenken, 2024

Maartje Frenken

De rode draad 

oil on canvas

120 x 80 cm

Maartje Frenken (NL)

You're not alone 

oil on canvas

130 x 90 cm

www.maartjefrenken.nl