Welcome!

Art biography   

In hindsight, my art career started during my period being a young medical student when a nice nurse knitted me a jersey of raw sheep wool from their own herd. Gratefully, I made an oil painting portrait of her in return and I still wear the jersey when sculpturing! A few years later, I attended the centenaire de l’impressionisme, an Impressionist exhibition in Paris (1974). Inspired, I copied Monet’s the bridge at Argenteuil, Renoir’s Bal du Moulin de la Galette and Degas portrait of a young girl (trying pastels). Also for fun, I made a few stone sculptures and did some wood carving. After 25 years of  creative silence, I started following courses stone sculpuring at the Beeldhouwersschool in Groningen. I made several sculptures from all different kinds stone like serpentine (a book shelf rest), white alabaster (my right hand), vaurion (a hard type of French chalk stone, a birds water basin, shaped like a Catalpa leaf), red travertine (again a bookshelf rest, this time my left hand vingers and thumb), ordinary marble ( a right hand carrying a pink soapstone torch, as a tribute to the olympics game) and opal serpentine (a portrait of a lady with luxuriant hair). Also then, I designed my first bronze statue (Daphne), inspired by the marble sculpture Daphne and Apollo by Bernini. From 2012 onwards I devoted structurally more time to sculpturing, choosing more difficult kinds of stone (above 5 Mohs scale) diabas, milas kirmizi (an impressive dark red Turkish marble, with blue specks), whamani, granite and jade (a commission). These types of stone need specialized equipment, but harbour more attractive compressed geological secrets from a time long past, which may be retrieved after intensive polishing. 

During winter time I make bronze figures, usually with some humorous twist or metaphorical intention. I try to give them some empathic feel and aesthetical attractiveness. 

 In 2015, I started to work on wood again. Gouges and chisels, but also a sculpturing ax, a very nice tool and chain saw carving, an even nicer tool. Wood gives sculptures a different feeling.

Painting is not altogether dropped, but less nurtured. However, I like to explore and create dedicated paintings in the preferred style that adds a personal imprint to ones house interior.

 As a member of the Dutch medical art society, Pincet & Penseel, I contribute to exhibitions in hospitals (photograph depicts the woodshed where I used to work).