Kaj Derks

When I took the picture it was because of the contrast of the young man tying his shoelaces against the background of cars moving by. I can remember liking the concentrated position and the colors of a moving BMW. Even though I generally find cars highly overrated in praktical way -I’d rather bicycle- when it comes to easthetics I find BMW’s pretty high on my list. It was in Berlin that I took this picture.

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Now it’s hanging in a kitchen, in Berlin, in between shelves with tea and breakfast and old Dutch communist party-posters providing a nice perspective on this picture. This kitchen is quite cozy, in fact the entire appartment is. It’s a little messy, a little improvised and everywhere is some kind of creative expression to be found.

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It’s the kitchen of my two friends. The past year this appartment has been my home-base in Berlin. When working and meeting there for Masta-magazine I would stay in the livingroom, cook a bit in this kitchen and have chats and beer with Joep and Julia, the residents of this appartment. » Continue Reading…

This is how the first painting I sold in years looks like in it’s final, well maybe not final, destination. Proud to be hanging in Bram and Lonja’s livingroom.

When this painting reached this state of beeing, it was immediatly clear that it was finished. Finished in the sense that it didn’t require any more work spend to it. Strangely I still don’t recognize it, although I do accept it as such (I made it, I was there), as beeing my work.

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Why do I have such hard time recognizing my own work?

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I’ll start calling some concrete possible causes according to the KISS principle: there is so much black, the lines and colorfieldborders are far from sharp, just a thin layer of paint and worst of all, it looks like and abstract orgy!

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Nothing bad about paintings or other work that consist of these characteristics. I only never expected to make something myself with one these things in it, let alone all combined.

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Property of Amarins Thiecke

Bored with not painting grabbed a canvas and a picture I that was on my wishlist for a while alread, an old faded postcard with a young woman on it.

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I loved the colors, mostly bleu, turquoise and green but also some yellow, skin and purple.

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The expression that came out isn’t like the picture but I didn’t disagree so kept it like this. Surprised but not unpleasant, it could go both ways.

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It was done in a matter of hours. ‘Pour Vour Madamme’ it said on the postcard.

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Property of Fieke Fleskens

A small painting, lot’s of light.

This girl was looking at art-work hanging in a tree, which was made by her and her classmates. My friend Maartje did a project with school-kids with whome she made cocoon-like things. She asked me, because I am good at and enjoy climbing in all kinds of things, to help hanging the sculptures in a tree. So I did and it rained the entire day until the job was done and all the sculptures were hanging in the tree. When I got out and Maartje had a talk while the school was watching the sun came back. It was this kind of yellowish afternoon-sun after an entire day of rain that shone from the back of the tree. I took the chance to take a couple pictures of the kids that were looking back into the sun.

This girl was sitting on her fathers shoulders, she was just a small part of the picture. She did have the most color, contrast and light which made her the most interesting part.

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Property of Frank Gahren and Corrie Gahren-Kaan

I think I took this picture on purpose but totally forgot about it until the film was developed.I know I took it at a carnival somewhere in a small village in the north-east of Thailand.

It’s the neck of a boy. He was wearing a bright pink shirt and the background was deep-green and dark. Maybe I used a flash, I think I did because the light comes from the viewer.

I can imagine that he didn’t know why I took the picture, but he kept still, taking pictures, that’s what ‘farang’ do. Farang take pictures and you’ll never find out why, in this case, the ‘farang’ was me and I also didn’t know why I took that picture.

Until I started painting it, at that moment I discovered that I liked the colors.-

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Property of Germaine Limpens

Don’t worry, it’s nothing personal. Drunk, loaded with whiskey-cola, we wandered the streets of Kong Kaen. Urinating outdoors is totally not done in Thailand, you’re not a dog are you? That’s the common point of view.

Well, came from Europe and we were drunk, I know it’s not a very honerable reason to ignore certain rules of a country but we did anyways. My friend is Thai, so he knew it was wrong (I knew it also but am not on the picture) that’s why he gave me the finger when I took the picture.

It’s one of my favorite pictures, I should try to make a better painting of it.

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Property of Suntorn Somboon

Together with tourists, art and people focused on a certain thing, pigeons belong to my favorite subjects.

They remind me of people, not only their positive side, and they secretly have really beautifull colors.

This is a small painting, an intermezzo.

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Property of Silvia Font

Again, the London subway.

These girls were sitting opposite to me in the subway on their way to go out taking pictures of themselves. I figured if they were already taking pictures of theirself I could aswell take a picture of them.

After painting the first layer I didn’t feel like painting another layer, yet, the painting was not finished. The red paint was needed to do the finishing touch.

Nice flirting

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Property of Yves Derks

My eye was caught by the color and texture of the coat and had already taken a picture of this guy. He was waiting before the traffic lights to cross a road, when he noticed one of his shoelaces being untied. He kneeled and re-tied them.

I took a picture of this guy, he, kneeling next to the traffic lights tieing his shoelaces while traffic was running by, big contrast of a concentrated action opposed to the fast moving world running by. A BMW 1 series was passing by in the background.

The painting was initiated because of this contrast but while painting I started to care less and less about that fast moving background and more and more about the concentrated action and the texture that caught a decent lighting.

So this I distilled from the picture, it was the original reason to take it anyways.

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Property of Julia Werness0n and Joep van Delft