Apéritif on Youtube

I posted earlier about this painting. I made it in 2006 for my grandmother and everything is centered around a bottle of Noilly Prat. At the time I had made a series of pictures at every stage of the painting. Only recently did I find out how to put those pictures together in a short time-lapse film that shows how the painting gets done. And here it is on Youtube!

Solko in Witte de With

This week one 'temporary' painting of me will be exposed in gallery de Aanschouw 80b in the Witte de Withstraat in Rotterdam. This street near the Boymans Museum is the main art-street of Rotterdam, with galleries and cultural institutes in between bars and grand-cafe's.
The painting I have done is a project of Daan, who asks a different artist every month to paint a new painting over the existing one on the same canvas. This layer, my painting, is the 38th layer and the project has been going on for almost five years now. Due to the temporary nature of the painting and the place it is being shown, I wanted to experiment a little more and get noticed, so for the first time I included some foul language in my painting.

Figure Sketching

De DonderdaGroep is a group of artists who come together every thursday evening in the studio of Willem van Veldhuizen to draw and sketch the human figure after nature. For the Festival of Light in Schiedam they had organized a fantastic drawing class in the style and ambiance of early 20th century Moulin Rouge, that reminesces Toulouse-Lautrec. I had a great time drawing there and worked my color sketching.

Gallery Neptunus

This is the logo I designed for my Gallery Neptunus. Since I and the gallery are both located on the island in the river of Rotterdam, one of the greatest and busiest ports of the world, I depicted the island as the back of a great whale. I myself am to be found inside the belly of the whale, trying to control and steer the whole colossal creature in the direction I envisioned. I like this idea, because, apart from the image of a whale navigating in between huge industrial container ships, in my mind it creates the room to start a serious and steady business, and steer it towards other places and shores.

Tango Sketches

My sketching in color is getting up to speed. When I'm not giving classes in the evening I like to hang out and dance at Cuartito Azul, the place to tango in Rotterdam. They often have live music and give classes almost every day of the week, so there is always a lot to see and draw. Tango itself, but particularly Cuartito Azul has a very nice and special athmosphere, that just lends itself to be drawn or painted. I met some other artists there who also like the idea, so maybe in the near future we'll try to do something more with depicting modern tango.

Rembrandt's Hand

This week I went to Wroclaw in Poland, where Peter Greenaway is shooting a movie about the life of Rembrandt. He asked me to make a number of drawings in the style of Rembrandt to be used in the movie. That was quite a challenge, but a very interesting one, I spent the whole week studying Rembrandts drawings and then drawing everything I saw in the way that he saw things. I was hoping that my hand would actually be filmed and be seen on the big screen, I even had my arms shaven to resemble the arms of the actor who plays Rembrandt. But as often, the time schedule was very charged and in the end there was no time for that, so it's just my drawings that will appear in the movie. It will hopefully be released in 2007. More about Peter Greenaway and his work can be seen at petergreenaway.co.uk

Menu

I was asked to make this menu for a dinner of the cycling-club RRG. I like doing illustrations from time to time and find it a nice change from the more serious and exploring approach that I have towards my painting. Especially menu's are particularly nice to illustrate, because in general there isn't a complex or detailed story to illustrate, and it's mostly just left to the imagination and mood of the artist.