When I was a student and
came home in the weekends, I started to paint
at night in my father's studio, learning by trying out things, and
when I
finished my studies I decided to make painting a fulltime
occupation. All
this has taken quite some time; and now, I have built this website
as a
means of looking for a congenial place to exhibit my
paintings.
Technique
Many layers of oil paint, applied ever thinner, can give a
painting micro-
scopic detail, endless color gradation and amazing light effects:
the thin-
nest, whitish top layers that are almost invisible by daylight can
produce a
completely different painting under artificial lighting, and a
large painting
made in this way can light up a room.
Layers of paint also produce a relief which adds to the light
effect, and
when the composition is taking shape, I enhance this aspect by
first building
up the foreground forms in primer, to give them body. Oilpaint
which is
being applied in layers can also be kneaded and manipulated with
the fingers;
an example of this technique is my painting "Castle in the Clouds".
So far, I didn't use computers or technical gimmicks in making my
paintings.
Tracing slides can be a help in composing a picture, but often the
telltale
photographic deformations cost more time to put right than making
an original
design; my best-loved way of fixing forms is by using cutout pieces
of paper
and cardboard.
Paintings and
Pictures
The light effect of a carefully
constructed painting can sometimes be glimpsed
in a very good slide, but when scanned and viewed in a small
format, all fine
detail gets lost, and, in the case of my paintings, images remain
that could just
as well have been made in another way, using photographic
techniques, elec-
tronic imaging etc. When seen in reality, the paintings don't
convey that im-
pression; photographs don't look like
that.
Summary
My
paintings can be best described as landscapes of the mind, inner
land-
scapes. In the process of making a painting, a number of ideas have
to occur at
the right moment: I think a painting should be inevitable, rather
than sur-
prising. Apart from the image, I want a painting to look good in
different
lighting situations, and catch the light in an interesting way
through the use of
relief, different kinds of paint
etc.
ADRIAAN
BROLSMA.
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