Sunday, 04-Sep-11 11:10:00 CEST

Start of Season 2010 at De Stoker

Three months ago I started to blog about my art. I started from my childhood and blogged myself through the summer and my artistic life up until present. Now I have come to the point that I will start blogging about what I produced the previous season at the gallery de Stoker in Amsterdam. That gallery is run by a number of artists of various professions. One of the artists, Maroesja, is a painting artist among other things and she arranges model sessions in her studio at de Stoker.

Since I have really high ambitions and I am eager to learn how to paint portrait and models it is necessary to practice much so I got the chance to attend these sessions regularly at gallery de Stoker on Sundays. There is no course held at de Stoker during these sessions but occasionally a “colleague” is suggesting something to another but this is just “one friend to another” basis or what you should call it. Nevertheless I appreciate these suggestions very much.

At Aquarelmere we also don’t have a teacher and we have a similar working atmosphere at Aquarelmere. I believe that it is in associations like these that really awesome art can come forth. When I read about the impressionists in Paris 1863 to circa 1900 it sounds to me similar to what I am being part of right now at de Stoker and Aquarelmere. There is something about this working atmosphere that I appreciate much.

When we are painting there is often classical music playing in the background. It smells a little from the paint and the turpentine. There is less toxically kinds of turpentine used. Some of these smell a bit of citrus. It is for the rest silent until someone starts scraping on the canvas. In the studio on the next floor there are sometimes ceramic workshops and then you can faintly hear people laugh, talk and walk. In the breaks are people talking to each other and the model is walking around in a bathrobe and stretching a little. There is coffee and tea.

At the beginning of the season I had decided to take on a new challenge: learn how to paint with oil based paint. Of environmental and health reasons I decided to learn how to paint with a new form of oil based paint where the pigments are mixed in a water soil able oil emulsion. Van Thalens Cobra. Some kind of mayonnaise? Most creams for skin care are water soil able oil emulsions. I am not so good at chemistry so as for now this is what I know about this. What I need to know is that for a large part I don’t need to expose myself to turpentine fumes. The pigments in the paint are containing all sorts of material and I have no expectations that these are all healthy but I am told that the biggest health issue comes from the turpentine and not the pigments. For an aquarellist Cobra paint feels like pushing around a clutter of beauty cream on the canvas.

It is possible to paint aquarelle with the Cobra paint. Indeed you can do that with regular oil paint but most oil paint artists don’t realize this, then they are called “turpentinists”. It is possible to make fantastic things with aquarelle techniques so I think oil painters should really try that.  Normally I start off a painting in a meager layer. In oil jargon it is called meager because subsequent layers should be fatter. An aquarellist calls it “wet”.

Some things of my painting I do without realizing it and when I started with oil I used the same approach like I do with aquarelles. In the start of the season the paintings were painted in a direct way, very quick. I have that urge for painting with momentum and I keep that a lot with oil painting as well. I see that some of my colleagues are struggling with the momentum.

This painting here is one of the first paintings at de Stoker made with oil paint. The painting is made on my home made panels. The first version of these had no border. They had gesso to the edge so I used the entire area for painting. It was difficult to handle the panels in a wet condition practically. I tried many various things for how to transport the paintings without smearing the paint. On this painting you see the prints of my thumbs on the edges! I made this painting 3rd of October 2010.