Summer has arrived in my garden
June Newsletter
Dear reader,
In early spring my garden is full of dry branches with brown, wilted leaves. Here and there you can see the green tops of bulbs gently emerging, but there is nothing more. When I look out the window, I think: 'What a tiny shitty garden we have.'
Every summer I am amazed at how beautiful the garden looks when the roses start to bloom. In June there are so many smells, colors and textures behind our house! There is so much depth that our little garden almost seems big. The wild-looking rambler that climbs against the shelter treats me to a wonderful smell every morning, especially when the sun is shining. Further from the house, clouds of spur flowers and stork's beaks surround the more solid forms of the English roses and phlomis. This year I also have a Shakespeare rose for the first time and I can't wait to try to capture that beautiful deep color in oil paint. I know many of the readers love an abundant flower garden. If everything is blooming beautifully at your place too, I would encourage you to dive into the garden with your painting supplies.
Just like the garden, the art business also has less beautiful periods and just when you think it is no longer worth it, you suddenly see the light again. You grab your brushes, unfold your easel among the flowers and let go of your negative thoughts. In my recent YouTube video I talk about the less pleasant sides of the artist profession. Administration, marketing and the constant search for ways to get my work seen by more people are things that take up a lot of time and energy. When I have little or no time to paint, I wonder if I wouldn't be better off doing something else. Putting an end to being an artist.
I need a fall to climb up and to grow.
If you also have a creative mind, you might recognize that pattern of ups and downs. Of fully creating and then slumbering for a while.
This month I discovered why I have often been dissatisfied lately. It's because painting has become a must for me. Every time I pick up my panel or even my sketchbook, it's with the idea that it has to be something sellable. That puts enormous pressure on my creative process and is bad for my self-confidence. Because when I only think about potential buyers, I forget about myself and what makes me happy: experimenting and studying.
That's what I miss! I miss the days when I could just mess around and no one would notice. Fortunately, I have given myself permission to do that again. This is partly due to the discovery of the inspiring work of Melanie Chadwick from Cornwall. In her newsletter and on her YouTube channel she gives her followers a glimpse into her sketchbooks, which she fills with drawings of the beautiful Cornish landscape.
My own sketchbooks are full of musings, drafts of my newsletters and sketches in preparation for a larger work. Few sketches for the sake of sketching. No visual diary.
In the Explore and Draw podcast, Melanie takes you on her walk in search of a place to sketch en plein air. You hear the wind, the seagulls, she tells you what she sees and what she thinks. It's very simple and it's over after half an hour, but I really enjoy it.
By sharing what she does, Melanie encourages me to just do it too. Without too many preparations and expectations. Simply capturing what I see.
Last year, 2023, was all about fantasy for me. I then made a whole series of oil paintings and watercolors that were partly or completely created by my imagination. It gave me great satisfaction to create my own world and at the beginning of this year I made new sketches for new paintings with a magical atmosphere. But somehow it feels forced. Reality is suddenly my source of inspiration again and trying to capture the beauty around me makes me very happy. With the emphasis on trying. Daring to make mistakes in the search for the right colors, textures and movement in the garden and landscape. Fortunately, I will have enough time to practice that in a week, because then the Painting Festival in Noordwijk starts.
Do you always start a project with the idea that it should become a work of art? Then I invite you to enjoy the process more, just like me!
Because let's be honest: painting is just a lot of fun.
I hope to have conveyed this to my students at the Classical Academy in Groningen, where I had my last day of classes on Thursday. The course was 15 lessons long and was about learning to look abstractly and the effect of color. We worked from live model most of the time and my hands were itching to join the painting. Fortunately, I was able to give a number of demos, but I am not yet satiated. Hopefully I will be able to paint more portraits from life in the near future.
No more lessons for the time being, but if you have an idea or proposal for a course or workshop, please let me know.
Art prints
I already mentioned it on my YouTube channel and in a previous newsletter: there is a small selection of art prints on my website and there is more to come! Today I want to put the art prints of The butterfly hunt and White Rabbits in the Moonlight in the spotlight. When I received the proofs, I was very impressed by the quality of these watercolor reproductions. I personally paint the originals on Hahnemühle Copperplate paper and the paper I chose for the reproductions is Hahnemühle German Etching, which is very similar. This makes the art prints almost indistinguishable from the originals, which are not for sale.
Another work of which you can also order an art print is Rocks in the moonlight. This is a special painting for me, because in it I try to portray my son's imagination. When painting the rocks and the child I used a photo I took on a sunny day on holiday in Corsica. Since it had to be a night scene, I was guided by my sense of color when composing and developing it. I have done this search for a certain dreamy atmosphere before in my watercolors, but it was the first time that I worked in such a free way in oil paint.
I am therefore very proud that Rocks in the Moonlight has been published in the second round of the summer exhibition at Green and Stone in London. Maybe it won't work out, we'll see.
I show fragments of my own childhood fantasy in the form of drawings from my childhood in one of my latest YouTube videos. In this trip down memory lane I also discuss my first sources of inspiration and heroes from the time when I started drawing from observation, as a teenager.
Exposities en evenementen
We are almost halfway June and that means that after Noordwijk it is time for the exhibition in Tournus, France. My paintings and drawings have been staying there since May and will be exhibited from July 4 at Galerie Nakaï. A 'Meet and Greet the Artist' will also take place on a yet unknown date in August. The painting shown are a selection of Mediterranean landscapes and recent still lifes. Do you want to know how these came about? Then take a look at my YouTube channel.
That's the update for now and I hope to have all kinds of exciting news again in July. Did you find this newsletter interesting to read and do you want more? Then it would be nice if you subscribed to my monthly content. Don't forget to tip your friends!