‘Untold Stories’

The woman here is relaxed and asleep, enjoying her free time. This pre-dates the Untold Stories project.

I love to put a cat in to my illustrations once in a while. The cat, a red one, gives a relaxed feeling to the picture. This pre-dates the Untold Stories project.

The title of this illustration is based on a text of Marcus Cumberlege: "Some priceless moments have not been recorded". The picture itself brings my memory back to one of my bicycle trips around France. Next to a road there was a neglected statue - a high concrete tube with an old car from a fair carrousel on top. (This was my inspiration for this picture).

The persons in front are a man and a woman: a couple? I do not know. But their feet are tired from walking, and needed a warm and relaxing small foot bath. They are sitting on a bench; is the bench standing on or in the landscape? Or is the landscape transformed into a sea? It is a sea, but on the horizon you see a fisherman, who wants to catch a big fish. The water where he’s fishing reflects the golden evening or morning sky. This whole scene catches the viewer on the wrong foot, because the viewer thinks those two people are sitting on a bench in the middle of a landscape. But they sit on water. The Hanging Clouds are dark and express a morning or evening sunset or sunrise. The clouds have a dramatic expression. That all is a bit the twist I give into this work, and a thing to think about. But by the end, this story will not have anything to do with my end product – or maybe it will … That’s another twist. (42cm x 30cm)

There are three stories in this painting, based on two real events, while the third story is imaginary. The first story is one I participated in here at home in our garden with my lovely Linda. The second story happened in the village of Watou when I was there to visit friends and to visit the well-known summer exhibition in that village near the French-Flemish border. This time I didn't participate, but the bath was outside in the garden, it was also a warm summer night, and the two friends who lived there were ready to take a bath outside in the garden. Just the same act as Linda and I did before. Each of these events happened on a warm and lovely summer night. I gave them my own interpretations. The third story is two persons in the bath nowadays, representing me with a friend. But this third story never happened and is imaginary.

A couple is looking at a painting in a museum: "Chicken with two eggs".

This painting is inspired by a photo I took a few days ago: “The shadow of a crow”. In the painting the shadow is completely white: the bird has no details, an eye, wings, or beak and so on, because the bird is a shadow. And I made the whole background blue, maybe sky or whatever - it could be water too. It all depends on how you choose to interpret it. The shadow of the bird is another unsolved question, because in my interpretation the bird can’t be a shadow anymore, because it stands against a blue sky or in the perspective of a sea. So that’s the game in this one! (42cm x 30cm)

Last summer I was sitting and hanging in to my chair. It was a nice sunny day and my eyes watched the sky, a blue sky with hundreds of white, white, white clouds driven by, by the tempo of the wind.

The painting is based on a real life photo I took during a long walk in and around the Dutch village of Thorn. The sky was dramatic and the cyclist is riding on a path at a bit higher level. The sun shone at that moment from where the cyclist was riding. So it is against the light. The size of this picture is bigger than the rest at 80cm x 60cm.

This is situated at the local "fish market" in summer time, I think on Thursday evenings. The pubs surrounding the market are giving a tango evening on the little square inside the fish market. This fish market was built in the time of Napoleon Bonaparte. The man in the foreground leans against one of the many concrete pillars surrounding the market. He's waiting for his turn to get a dance and enjoys watching the whole dancing group .

Two woman are balancing on a kind of balance with in the middle an animal (a cat ?) to control them, or to keep them in a balance of life ?

A man stands inside an art gallery where he has his exhibition, and from behind an old window he is looking outside. He's terribly bored. Because many people are walking by in front of his exhibition, but nobody enters.

I was bicycling on possibly the highest road - about 4,000 meters high - in Kirgizstan. And I couldn't resist making an illustration from these magic moments.

A long time ago I made, together with my best cycling friend Hendrik, a bicycle trip in Kirgizstan. I made a few impressions - sketches from a three weeks' memorable trip. Here are a few locals watching us. It was a perfect composition for me to make a sketch from it. They probably enjoyed us as well - as crazy strangers on bicycles, visiting their way of life and country.

I made this to celebrate a moment of change and to tell my two sisters that we are now three sisters. They have always accepted me in my big struggle to become the person I always wanted to be.