Sometimes a shape keeps returning in my work before I fully understand why. These small forms have become shelter shapes in contemporary painting for me, although they did not start that way.
A roofline.
A dark edge.
A small structure in an open landscape.
A place you could almost step into.
And that is something I actually do quite often.
In different countries, in different places, in completely different landscapes. I look at these forms. I walk past them. Sometimes I stop. Sometimes I only carry them into my work much later.
At first, I thought I was painting houses. Or greenhouses. Or small structures in the landscape. Something I had seen outside, somewhere between fields, sky, earth and glass.
But slowly I began to realise it was not only about that. As always 🙂
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These small forms return in many different ways. Across different series, too. Sometimes as a small Icelandic house in a vast landscape. Sometimes as the edge of a greenhouse in the Bollenstreek. Sometimes as a dark triangle, a roof, an opening, a place that seems to offer just enough shelter.
All with their own character and their own qualities.
And honestly, that does not surprise me
Between Being Seen and Disappearing
I live between cultivated fields and greenhouses. They have become part of the way I look. Not as neat landscapes, but as forms that stay with me. Glass, plastic, earth, light, wind. The soft next to the raw.
These are recurring things too. Things that belong to me, and have done so all my life.
That tension was already present in my Icelandic Houses series. Think of the seemingly small houses in an immense landscape. Human presence against something much larger. Fragile and strong at the same time.
In my newer work, I can see that this form has come closer. Less literal, perhaps. More like a sign. More like a feeling. And there is still so much I can do with it. I will keep exploring that.
A shelter shape
Maybe that is why I keep returning to shelter shapes in contemporary painting: they are never only buildings, and never only symbols.
Not necessarily a house. Not necessarily a greenhouse. More like a place between hiding and appearing. A place where something may exist for a while without having to become fully visible immediately.
A Shape I Only Understand Later
I often work from feeling. Not from a fixed image that I want to execute neatly. Most of the time, it begins with a colour, a movement, a line or a shape that appears.
Mixed Media on canvas | 2024
Part of the Icelandic House art series
Icelandic House Red
Icelandic House art series | 70 x 80 x 2 cm
And that continues to fascinate me.
That small structure.
That roof.
That dark edge.
That place you could almost crawl underneath.
Only later do I begin to understand why such a shape keeps returning. Or perhaps I will never fully understand it, and maybe that is exactly why I keep painting it.
Because some images are not meant to be solved. They do not need to have a clear meaning straight away. They are allowed to be present, to return, to change, to shift.
Just like thoughts do.
Studio Notes — Shelter Shapes
Not a Literal Landscape
I do not paint the landscape as it physically stands in front of me. I carry pieces of it with me.
An edge.
A colour.
A rhythm.
A sense of space.
A small shape holding its ground.
Snowwhite – Icelandic House – 80 x 130 cm
After that, something else happens
In the work, such a shape becomes less of a building and more of a carrier of something inner. A place for vulnerability, perhaps. Or for strength. For stillness. For waiting. For beginning again.
It is something, being followed by a shape. But apparently, this one does that.
And maybe this is also how a visual language begins. Not because you know everything in advance, but because you keep looking at what returns.
The Shelter Shape as Part of My Work
For me, these small shelter shapes have become part of a larger investigation. They connect my surroundings in the Bollenstreek with earlier series such as Icelandic Houses. They connect landscape with symbolism. The outer world with the inner world. Material with feeling.
They are soft and solid at the same time.
Sometimes almost childlike in their simplicity. Sometimes darker, rawer, more charged. But again and again, they stand there. Small in a large space. Open and closed at the same time.
As if they are saying: something may stay here for a while, to recover.
And maybe that is exactly why I keep painting them.
If you would like to see the work beyond the screen, you are welcome to visit my studio by appointment.