Lieve Plus, a day in her studio

This is the full translation of an interview by the well-known art critic Frans Boenders, published in Lieve Dejonghe artists' book:
"Hoe meer je kijkt hoe groter de Wereld wordt. Plus on regarde, plus le Monde s’agrandit. The more you look the larger the World becomes. 当你更多地观察，世界世界就会变得更大"

Lieve Dejonghe and Frans Boenders: a dialogue on lustre, light and the joy of painting.

Lieve Dejonghe. Your name means a lot; it implies love (lieve) and youth (dejonghe). But even divine children sooner or later have to leave the paradise of their youth and - if everything goes well- discover or build their own paradise. When did you discover the pleasures of painting? Are you an early or a late bloomer?
I started painting early. My brother and sisters are older and sometimes they still grumble: Why was Lieve allowed to do something artistic while we were not allowed? My mother’s answer was always the same: I couldn’t stop her!
I was continuously experimenting with ink, paint and pencils that I bought with my first savings.

Do you still have some works from your early youth? Often parents keep their children's drawings until the time they finally realise they did not give birth to a new Miro or Picasso.
Oh, yes. I used to have my own cabinet where I could store my own-made treasures. Most were copies, no simple tracing or colouring books; at the age of six or seven I copied images from children’s magazines, Mickey Mouse and similar children’s heroes… .
... pop art even before you had any idea about pop art...
... and I already kept a diary with drawings about what happened. Notice that I continued with it until the age of thirty-seven! Even today, when travelling I create similar illustrated journals. One of them - Kanttekeningen uit China (1988) - has been published by the Belgian China Friendship Association in Brussels. My first trip to explore China, the Middle Empire, was in 1987. At that time I just wanted to explore the whole world.

By that time you already knew quite well how to draw and paint. But when did you decide to become an artist?
Immediately after primary school! But I had to take another two years of general education before I could enter the specialised Arts department at the age of fourteen. After finishing secondary Arts education my intention was to continue at a real Academy of Arts, preferably in the newest department at the time: Fashion Design. But my parents insisted I first needed to graduate as a bachelor in Arts Education, which gave perspectives on a teacher’s career. Fortunately at that time one could earn a bachelor’s degree in only two years.

So after all you were not so rebellious….
... Well, after all I thought it was not such a bad idea to teach drawing and painting. And studying at the Academy would still be possible later on. But after graduation I had to earn my own living, which meant combining teaching with my studies at the Academy of Bruges and occasionally at the Academy of Ghent.

ARTS TEACHER

How long were you an arts teacher?
Until the moment I realised my own artistic work was claiming me completely.

Teaching and simultaneously being taught is a rare combination in a single person, creating a harmonious synthesis between receiving and donating.
I really enjoyed teaching thirteen to fourteen year old pupils. By teaching a broad and quite accessible program, explaining again and again the basic tenets of drawing and painting, you can really improve yourself. Teaching young people how to handle complementary colours, how to compose an aesthetically correct image on a page, how to consider light and shadow, how to express their world and their feelings, how to look critically at their own creation, actually shapes the teacher.

In my spare time I just painted as I liked, without much direction or considerations - now abstract, then figurative, or again modernistic. As a second job I wrote short stories and illustrated for magazines. I also illustrated book covers for publishing houses. I enjoyed it without really considering it as ‘my art’. Finally there was my volunteer work in an avant-garde art gallery, which determined my perspective on art at that time.

RAVEEL AND PICASSO AS ROLE MODELS

Which great artists have thoroughly influenced your life?
My idols were Brancusi, with his extremely sensual works; the exotic Gauguin; the Roger Raveel with his limpid colours and clear spaces, the white and particularly his Flemish-English white. But Picasso is engraved forever on my retina and in my brain; at varying intervals I feel I must return to the Picasso museum in Paris and lavish myself again at the master’s free soul. Picasso always did what he wanted to do, and always wanted to succeed in what he did. His self-confident device was: I don’t search, I find. When he discovered something new, he developed it with all his energy, only to abandon it when something else popped up. Then he immediately lost his interest and would rush into a new project. He was an archetypal player; the gambler in him made him an unsupportable, offending fellow. As an artist, again and again he broke through one artistic limit after the other, while at the same time there was an organic evolution in his oeuvre. I too like change in my work, and do not consider that as a rupture but merely as a meandering road.
On that road full of surprises one day I experienced a kind of Saul-Paul conversion. It happened by chance, I was 33 and wandering about at an art fair. Suddenly my eyes caught a monograph about the Dutch realistic painter Henk Helmantel…
the best Dutch one! ...
I suddenly realised that having grown up in the eighties, so far I had spent most of my time on a rather irrational fight against realistic art. I was bowled over with surprise by this kind of art, which was perhaps not as original as the herrings of Thierry Decordier on the walls of the gallery I worked in, but that I recognised in a flash as a perfect preview of what I would like to paint myself. I realised that with hard work and steadfastness this could be my type of art! My decision was made. I abandoned teaching, told my husband and children that from now on I was a full-time artist-painter and tackled the job, which would turn out as intensive as that of a concerto pianist.

This kind of art requires meticulous efforts to render objects and figures in a specific composition true to nature without neglecting the painter’s own sensitive channel of expression. Calling this kind of art ‘realism’ is actually inadequate.
I fully agree. But since that ‘Aha-Experience’ the evolution of my work continued, without having to opt consciously for it. Mastering the metier was a pleasant process because, as you suggested, creating a technically perfect painting also gave me a chance to express my own feelings. At that point I realised how badly ‘realistic’ art was underestimated in the small world of trendy museum art. Little by little I felt a vocation to brush away the dust of realistic art’s old-fashioned and dull image, to make it dynamic and enjoyable.
The step by step acquisition of technical know-how finally opened my eyes: What made my new paintings realistic? Very little. ‘Realism’ as an artistic style now seems to me an empty box with plenty of improper space. Just one example: As I mentioned, when visiting exhibitions, for a while I was thrilled by the tactile aspects of sculptures like the ones of Brancusi; but why would I have to call that direct sensual contac’t ‘realistic’? I find that even Vermeer’s ‘Woman Reading a Letter’ is not a realistic painting. Art is an organic process; she grows in me and I grow in her. For graduation (1981) I had to prepare a paper about an artist of my own choice. I selected an unknown (at that time) artist, Roger Raveel. He was a friend of our neighbours; he created lovely works and I could pay him a visit in Machelen. I admired, and continue to admire his work very much.

Why?
Because of his sophisticated playing with spaces and familiar images questioning reality which calls up the question of reality – and therefore of realism. Adding shock wire, cages and mirrors will catch the spectator, sometimes fool him, but always make him think about the visible images and the invisible ideas in the background. I was and still am deeply impressed by his ‘The Terribly Beautiful Life’. At age 22 I borrowed money from my mother to buy five lithographs of Raveel, called ‘The Painting Procession’ and I still enjoy them every day.

STATES OF MIND

Raveel produces ‘realism,’ a new vision about the true nature of reality, fiction and imagination, a vision that no longer cares about rendering images true to nature. One could call it ‘philosophical realism’. But you gradually took a completely different way.
Strange you put it so strongly! When today somebody asks me, “Hey, are you painting flowers now?” I look up and say, “What do you mean? Well if you look at it that way…” But you know, for me the flowers on my paintings are states of mind, textures, the expectation of fragrances and erotic, materialised beauty and decay. No, I am not a painter of flowers. Of course, things carry a name, but names are a mere conceptual, virtual addition, not their ontological essence.

So you paint paintings.
I am neither interested in the flower, the pot nor in the vase only for themselves. The thing that matters for me is: what will I tell through them? Actually, today I am using flowers in the same way as the abstract elements I painted fifteen years ago, when I tried to express myself via squares, blots or an arabesque. You can compare it with the fat and felt of Joseph Beuys or Duchamp’s urinary. Are we not all engaged in the same? In the present phase of my life my object is ‘an’ object, a thing: it offers me the opportunity to express what I believe I need to express.

Does ‘it’ just bubble up in you and looking for ‘its’ object?
One day I don’t feel comfortable about, let’s say the war in Iraq or the nuclear catastrophe threatening Japan. I have to get rid of this uneasiness by painting. It has been like that since I started painting. When I am delighted, I need to express my happiness in a painting; when I have troubles with my sisters, it is the same. I do not paint a certain theme. Movements inside me stirred up by external circumstances, these are what I paint! Four, five years ago I was confronted with the fact that the objectives of the feminist movement are still far from fulfilled. It was a shocking realization that found its way out through my paint brushes. Shortly after that experience, I lived for a while in China. In South China I met some old ladies with bound feet, a very concrete and visible example of women’s oppression. Thus I painted the minuscule Chinese women’s shoes to express my feelings that women’s oppression is not something from a faraway eastern country or from the past century but something here and now. Some of my paintings may look Chinese due to particular circumstances, but actually express universal feelings through a universal language of images and forms. It is the same way in my latest works where I also strive to cross ‘stylistic’ limits.

So, should I call such paintings feminist?
Why not? I am very proud that this painting has been shown in the municipal Arts Museum in Shanghai in March 2010, at the occasion of the centennial celebration of International Women’s Day, as part of an international exhibition of women artists.

But the little shoes you paint basically result in nice images. The ethical side of the work remains largely hidden by your aesthetics. The feminist statement is more in your head than in the painting.
(After thinking a while) You may be right, apparently at least. I never notice ugliness, things that would visually repulse me. I go past disturbing elements. My life goes so fast that I even don’t have enough time to see, let alone to record, all the beautiful things I see. Why should I busy myself with ugly things? I do not want either to lose myself in dreams or represent the world more aggressively than necessary.

Don’t you think that the world is often so repulsive, warlike, and horrible that you have to counterfeit war, aggression or misery?
Like Francis Bacon on his paintings? Indeed, that’s not my kind of art. Of course I can visit a Bacon retrospective exhibition and appreciate it as an art historian; but upon leaving I wonder what in heaven’s sake somebody wants to achieve with such images. For sure this is the kind of thing I don’t want to impose on the visitor.

Less confrontational than the almost transcendental aggression in Bacons oeuvre, but at least as masterful is the figurative work of Lucian Freud, in my opinion perhaps the most emotional and most important living painter – and, by the way, one of the most expensive as well. He shows us the naked absolutely unadorned man, often extremely human in his objective ugliness. Would you also judge his work as an artistic high level achievement, but not your cup of tea? Or are we getting closer to you when looking at his works?
Let me answer with two questions: What is ugly? What is kitsch? Ugliness can be very beautiful, depending on how the painter will render it. I do not oppose ugliness or – using a term that may better illustrate the spirit of our époque - aggression. But, at least at this point of my artistic development, I do not produce aggressive paintings. We are deluged with painful images; the reality of our world is painful enough. Even if my work often focuses on the dark side of society and life, it should not result in a painful image.

ART FOR MUSEA

Let’s talk about another big name. Luc Tuymans’ paintings certainly breathe subdued violence, slumbering terror and ominous tension. In this way, his pictorial demarche appeals to a specific, contemporary world, which many spectators recognise as their own. Tuymans hall-mark is an almost unbearable eeriness. In your opinion, is this part of the generalised aggression you reject in your paintings?
You can say so, yes. I believe it is tendentious. It is very ‘in’ to scare people, to suggest we are in danger. It is trendier than ever, in the world of advertising, in an ‘objective’ news report, in music and so on. That is one of the reasons why people identify with it: it is a way of thinking we are fed daily. It is a trendy formal language that sells well. It makes me uneasy to find out how the same people get nervous themselves when you try to discuss in concrete terms ‘the danger’ they talk about. When I opted for a certain kind of realism, many ideas came to my mind. I was very conscious that my choice was totally non-trendy. During ‘my’ eighties figurative realism was indeed not done ... My own small circle was very surprised about that woman who suddenly decided to paint still lifes. I, who until then used to acclaim abstract art and permanent innovation, began to ask myself the stringent questions of why and how those avant-gardes had succeeded in positioning themselves on the front stage. For me at least, it became evident that page was turned because the whole development went far beyond its objectives. For sure, there was an epoch when art had to break out of the bourgeois salons and to develop closer to the heart of society. Great. But in the meanwhile art is again caught in a similar trap. It is specially produced at the request of a curator, for an elitist exhibition or for a public relations stunt of an enterprise. The rebellious artists of the past have become themselves docile bourgeois who supply art commodities. Now, coming to my own image language, I often read in the eyes of the visitors something like “Well, we have never seen this before, it is really new!” and I see them simultaneously relax. That makes me very, very happy.

Broadly speaking I can agree with your analysis. It correctly implies that contemporary plastic art no longer feels the need to justify itself: it is produced almost without any reservation. (Where have the great art critics of the past gone?) Contemporary art is accepted and installed in museums, public areas and important private collections, in one word, in today’s salons. These are the meeting places where guys who consider themselves better or at least more enlightened than ordinary people will drink champagne while (figuratively) tramping down on the works of art. I can imagine that such situations make you revolt. But was it a sufficient reason to suddenly start painting still lifes?
Well, at least it was a motivation, one that became stronger with the time I was involved in it. Once I had an exhibition and curiously solicited the opinion of a lecturer at the Antwerp Academy. From the doorstep, before he actually entered the room, he merely glanced at my paintings suspended there and said, "This is no art." He rendered me an invaluable service! I nearly laughed my head off. Isn’t it absurd? An expert who even doesn’t look properly but immediately serves his prejudice! You have to know that prior to his visit, the exhibition had attracted a great many people who truly enjoyed it and yes, even were moved to tears. It reminds me of an historical anecdote: Van Gogh was sent away from the Antwerp Academy because he was not a good artist, and something similar happened to the great Antwerp painter Eugeen Van Mieghem. I could only conclude: my career looks promising! If not now, then later. Since then I just work my own way, but I remain concerned to find criteria determining what art is and what it is not. For the time being nobody dares to put forward such kind of criteria, let alone apply them when making a balanced judgment. People don’t want to be ridiculed when suggesting that an old washing machine presented as art in a museum might be nothing more than another stupid repetition of Duchamp’s urinary. Snobbism prevents people from declaring that the emperor is naked. Snobbism is convinced that a perfect still life painted by Helmantel cannot be art, only a superbly applied technique. That is what I mean when saying that contemporary art has gone much too far. I do not agree with the only remaining two criteria that are often implicitly used: art has to be innovative and art must be shocking. For my part I stick to qualities like a good composition and a more than decent artisanal technique. Those are minimum requirements. A violin player has to master the settings of his fingers when playing a Bach partita, doesn’t he? But to have a good work of art, we need something more, a kind of emotion overlaying the necessary technique and insight in the composition. Realism is no aim in and of itself. The work of art must transcend the faithful reproduction of the perceived reality.

In that sense, Helmantel has an unmistakable religious halo. Moreover, he avoids any specific contemporary theme. He strives for a touching continuation of a certain tradition, for example his excellent suggestion of naked but sacral Protestant Church interiors of the 17th century. Another contemporary ‘realist’, Roger Wittevrongel, has amongst others chosen neglected, poor, sometimes straight ugly elements of our contemporary Flemish environment, for example, peeled off garage doors. You could rightly say that he is exploring the paradoxical beauty in it.
Ah! In the years after my ‘conversion’ I never did turn completely away from Helmantel, but little by little found my own different way. At one point in time, Helmantel was for me a dazzling eye opener. Slowly but surely I have outgrown him. Now when I visit the fair of realistic art in Amsterdam I look in a different way at all those Helmantel-lookalikes, the ‘fine- painters’ and realists who are displayed there.

Does it mean you now find the whole approach rather sterile?
Indeed. You know, for the last ten years there has been little evolution at these kinds of exhibitions, again and again they display their paintings of painted old planks with pots and antique drinking glasses or again the same kitchen towels. I wonder whether these ‘fine-painters’ ever quit their village, workshop, meadow or scullery? Have they never had a sick child? Have they never observed a landscape beyond their own homeland?
The same remark can also be made about many nonrealists; they create the same again and again. Or did they accept being tied-up by a gallery? Art galleries like to play it safe. Some even compel ‘their’ artists to continue painting in the same way ‘that sells so well’. Nevertheless, I would like to have a permanent cooperation with a gallery. An artist needs a gallery because he cannot continue to take care of everything. But finding a gallery who dares to invest in an artist who dares to evolve is not so easy, however many galleries and curators preach that they like change. The present financial crisis, on top of a certain kind of official culture policy, does not make life easy for art-dealers nor artists.

CHINA IN THE PICTURE!

Next China comes to the foreground. Is the contact with the Empire of the Middle really so important for you? Or was it rather a refreshing accident along the route and could it have been Colombia for you as well?
Why not? Life has its own ways. But China for me meant a genuine culture shock that reflects in my paintings. It is a good illustration of how my life and my art are evolving together. That is also part of my freedom; I don’t want to become a solidified igneous rock. I often have to hear, “Oh, your work has changed so much since last time.” When I discuss further with the visitors, they often conclude that ‘actually’ there is continuity, a link with previous works. Important for me is this process of outgrowing, which is not at all the same as only aspiring for something completely new. I am less aspiring than outgrowing. Outgrowing is a process that is progressive as well as partially unconscious.

I was twenty-three, married and loved adventurous travel in Africa, India and America. We wanted to see the whole world. China turned out to be a lucky coincidence. Politics and ideology didn’t mean much to me at that time. We travelled to learn, and that is still my starting point. We were in 1986: ’86 and not ’68 with its political slogans. There was hardly anything of that in my world of experience. From Africa and India I came back ill from what I had seen. In contrast, China gave me a people in an improbable expansion. In the face of a rigid and censured political climate the people seemed happy and starvation was no longer experienced, even with China’s gigantic population. But the people themselves did not appeal to me.
At home I continued to follow China, fascinated by its evolution. My Chinese diary appeared in 1988. In 1990 there was an international drawing competition for children. The Belgium-China Society, who had published my book, suggested to me that my class should take part in this competition. When I sent in the drawings, I received an invitation to be one of the judges in Shanghai. With pleasure, naturally!
The first time I was in China it was frustrating, as individual travel through this country was not easy at this time. The second time I travelled as a respected guest. All the doors opened of themselves, the red carpet was rolled out and that was in itself a special experience. Afterwards I took the time to climb the Huangshan alone, to make an extra excursion through the country and to open myself again to the people around me. It worked! Now I understood their humour and vision so much better.

China was still fascinating me when I met my present husband, who was in international business with China. Years later, when he decided to work and live in China between 2006 and 2008, it suited me perfectly. A sold out exhibition meant I needed to create new work in my atelier. Wasn’t this just as easy to do in Shenyang, in the Northeast of China?
Curiously, in Shenyang – a city with “only” a population of eight million - I painted a smaller size of paintings. The daily bustle forced me into a corner to create more traditional paintings, calling up images of a total other China. In that work, I think, I was searching for the harmony and intimacy of small cultural objects – a balance for the deafening life outside the door.

In 2010 China suddenly became so important for you. Your paintings decorated the successful Belgian Pavilion during the World Exhibition. Was that an official mission?
No, certainly not. I am not a museum artist and remain a baker’s daughter! It had nothing to do with politics, and everything to with my life’s path. It was not a promotion stunt paid by the Belgian chocolate industry that countless visitors saw my painted pralines in the famous Belgian Pavilion! Because life and painting are not separate worlds in me, in my art there are of course references to the smells and tastes of my youth. Baking gives warmth; I associate chocolate with warmth and confectionary. Chocolate gives comfort. It’s so simple!

During my first exhibition in 2002, little paintings appeared which had more to do with those comfort sweets that I was aware of. For that reason I dedicated that exhibition to my father and mother as an ode to my youth. Papa was deeply moved and I promised him, that whatever got into in my life’s path I would always continue to ‘bake’ tiny paintings with two chocolates.

But now you are painting over the chocolates that we saw recently pasted on your large spacious paintings…
This is how it is….. After the years (2006-2008) I wanted to tackle the theme of the speed of existence. I thought, “Why don’t I become sad about this?” Suddenly, I realised that life is dreary if it does not go quickly. And how you get along with the speed of life, you alone can fill that in. How can I express visually all these conflicting vantage points? In China, the circle is the symbol for heaven and the square symbolises earth.

By fixing small squares with two pralines on my large paintings, I wanted to show that each person must fill up ‘his’ square in his own way. In other words: how he will get along with the speed of existence. The reason I later freed the squares from chocolates was due to the fact that after my lovely and so very impressionable experience with the World Exhibition I wanted to free myself from the chocolate. By substituting the chocolates with empty squares the paintings became not less but gained in eloquence.
Through my travels in China and also through Japan I was influenced unconsciously by and became aware of Zen. The small formats with their intimate “still lifes” gave way to new, spacious visual horizons where you find space, white, light and mental peace. That’s where I am now. If viewers remark on the influences from Japanese prints in the emptiness and floating broken branches, I have to agree with them. I repeat: I seldom make my choices or influences. Such influences are not searched for; they appear spontaneously from my life’s changing perspectives and circumstances.

THE EMPTY SPACE

The empty spaces that you now create in this work, the delicate background colour gradations with just one flower or just one broken blossoming branch floating in emptiness indeed suggest Japan.
Zen, as all forms and ways of Buddhism, came originally from India. Bodhidharma exported it in the sixth century to China, where it became Chan. Via transformation into Son in Korea, it came in Japan to be called Zen and developed to its most pure form. The Samurai traditions also brought a strong influence to tell the truth. Transformations form the red thread, just as in your life and art. Your new work marks a counterpoint after the unbelievable fullness and density of China. The rest and peace in this series of floating flowers and blossoming branches is clearly a breathing space which you needed after two years of living in Shenyang and six hectic months in Shanghai, the world’s most hectic city.
On the 27th of April 2010 I left for Shanghai with a suitcase containing clothes for ten days. I stayed there, with the same suitcase, for six months. On top of that, there was the Icelandic volcano eruption which put a stop to international air traffic! The months in Shanghai flew by. The World Expo gave rise to more folks than usual in the streets! I have to admit that I fully enjoyed all the hectic situations. If not, I could have left my paintings in the Belgian Pavilion and returned to my home near the quietly rippling Durme River.

No, I enjoyed my success in the restless port city, where my work was being shown in no less than five places. In fact I needed to be physically present. It would be naïve to think that I could leave the organization of four exhibitions to someone else. My home front continued to receive phone calls that I was not coming back yet. It was not only the labyrinth of Shanghai that made this entire organisation a time and energy consuming Herculean task for me. The tuning of these four extra exhibitions in the mega city to that of the World Expo slurped up all my attention, nerves and ability to adjust.

Today I believe that I survived those overwhelming months because I have known China for so many years. The headache I felt in the first months diminished after a while and to my surprise made place for a permanent feeling of light ecstasy, which in its turn melted when I found or created silence around me.

I understood China only when I let myself float in the never stopping, permanent drive known to Chinese mega cities. Belgium sleeps. The first time I returned to Brussels after a half year in Shanghai I thought that I had forgotten a national holiday, or that a World Cup tournament was being sent live through TV. The capital of Europe was so very quiet!

After my discoveries of China, Japan and a long trip through the empty space of Tibet, I could, once at home, come back to my inner self in painting large formats and lightened spaces. Is that a synthesis of years of experience, abstract thought and work, composition and arranging spaces? Could someone who has only done ‘fine-painting’ been able to cope with such spaces?

YOUR OWN REALITY

Can we explore your own way of working?
If you do fijnschilderen (a detailed painting, originating in the Dutch Golden Age, hereafter referred to as ‘fine-painting’) you must work on a smooth panel. Every hair in the painting must not only be seen but also virtually felt. Unevenness on the surface will offer no chance for this striving for the highest perfection. On my panels are always at least five layers of priming, each of which must be sanded and polished. The materials I use for preparation depend on the quality of absorption of the paints that I anticipate. ‘fine-painting’ means leaving nothing to chance. Gesso, calcium, oils, turpentine, types of paint, mixtures... I choose everything with my eye on the result I want to achieve.

I used acrylic when I worked in abstract. Since then I have used oil paints, which is a life’s necessity to reach the finished quality I see for my eyes. At this time I work on panels as well as canvas, depending on what I want to achieve. In my larger works I like the texture of the canvas.

The choice of the background colour depends on how the actual representation will be perceived.
Certainly. In my recent work I have been choosing light background colours…

Whereby other lightening colours come, not tone on tone but light on light.
Oh, there are so many challenges in a painter’s life! Painters’ delight is the most prevalent in me, which does not take away the fact that it is dreadfully difficult to represent things accurately while at the same time my emotional tension should not wilt. Choosing backgrounds does not only happen intuitively. For example, a background in fading colour gradations seems to me to fit floating tulips or ephemeral blossoming branches coming up from nowhere like a glove, giving them the fullest justice. Under the fullest justice to a vegetative representation I mean not so much the specific type of flower, but more the cluster of emotions that - in the viewer - frees a delightful, but short lived flowering.

The title of my series ‘The (un)bearable Speed of Being’ alludes to this delicate tension.

Your subtle colour gradations do indeed show fleeting time. Do you know, in the seventeenth century P.C. Hoofd, one of Netherlands’ most gifted poets points us towards this (un)bearable, when he begins with a sonnet by calling time ‘wrathful’:

Wrathful time, why is it that thou quickens
More than thou art still? Leave this saddening
That I the heaven of Love’s nearness may enjoy?
What damage of my happiness that thou torment me within?
(Poem by P.C. Hoofd, translated from old Dutch into old style English by J. Pertz)

Yes, lovely, completely right! But does not the tormenting speed also enclose the splendid challenge to give this short lived beauty an existence in images? My choice of a background in gradually gradating colour is closely tied to the choice of my theme, but also to the desire to create abstraction around and with the ‘things’. The abstraction of the surface and the apparently concrete object go hand in hand, so that both the abstraction as well as the object are forgotten. Only delight, absorption and inner depth in the layers of the work are left over.

LIGHT ENVOY

In the paintings of Jef Verheyen, who died early in life, the foreground and background melt into one another in an ascending and at the same time descending colour scheme. Not by coincidence was Jef, just as his art companion Yves Klein, a Zen adept. Both of them practised Zen. Both practised Judo. Paintings of Verheyen seem simple but were in fact extremely difficult to paint precisely and accurately. Just as during a Zen meditation it seems easy as you only have to sit still – what for a normal mortal is in fact unbearable!
You just cannot imagine how happy I have become with the most difficult painter’s challenges. I disappear in what I am doing; I do not even hear anything when I paint. The challenge, the pleasure, the play: probably this is the reason I feel like a queen when I paint. A Dutchman once asked me how I could possibly paint so perfectly according to the golden section. I thought, “Really, golden section? Is it true?” I had never checked with a ruler. When I introduced the wooden square on my canvas paintings, I certainly thought of the Chinese cosmological vision of the earth as a square. However, I did not try to use the idea of a square form to give more profundity to the painting or to influence its composition. I took the small square out of the painting and painted on another material (wood instead of directly on the canvas) to show that the square is freed from the ‘speed of being’.
This is something that grows intuitively, nearly meditative and at the same time a playful game.

Let’s face it, I am my first spectator and if I do not really feel that it’s right, how do I expect my always hurried visitors to feel? For example, the play of shadows appeared in some of my paintings. How can it be that the viewer doesn’t even see that there is a couple making love in the corner of the painting, hidden by a shadow? In its own way, the image of this loving couple indicates that the speed of existence interferes with our subtle appreciation of life, which we should enjoy fully. How fine it is to see people discovering the shadow! The ones who really look at a work – is for me the most enjoyable and wonderful experience.

It is with pleasure and an appropriate pride that my works were shown at the World Expo in Shanghai. In the four paintings that hung there I revealed my whole life as an artist. On the 7th of October I returned to my home in Belgium. I wrapped myself in silence for four months to purify myself from the din.

Now I work mostly on canvas. My aim is to better grasp and do homage to light, which enchants me to no end. Light brings white and fine colours and so much free space with it. In this objects can float, telling their stories. Let me be an envoy of light.

Translation by Judith Pertz, Frank Williams; editing by Doris Woolf, Lani Winzer, Rachel Eichelbaum.