This is a painting that I have painted some 2 years ago and somehow I never got around documenting it, I just put it up on the wall of our bedroom to enjoy it in private. Why did this happen? It was not because I was not happy with the painting, I was and I still am. It has everything in it that I'm looking for in a painting, rich yet subtle colors, it's focused, the composition is strong but tranquil. And yet I have never shown it. It's because to me it looks so much like a Rothko. And somehow I have trouble getting my thoughts around that. I shall explain: I come of a school of thought where copying other artists was not considered the way to learn art. You were allowed to look at other art and learn from it, but it was stressed that you had to find your 'own voice' instead of copying other artists works.
Now let's make this clear: I have not copied this from Mark Rothko, this painting started out as one of my abstracts with much looser shapes and lines but halfway it decided to become this and I let it be, being very happy with the way it turned out but at the same time not ready to show it to 'the world'. My Dutch friend and painter Louis always says that everything you paint is something you have seen before, somewhere else, nothing is ever new yet it is always new in the way you make it yours. And I agree with him, being a visual creature by nature as a painter, you're always open to shapes, signs, colors and somehow they float around in your memory waiting to find a place in your work whenever you're ready for them. I have always loved Rothko's paintings, I may have been the only 12 year old in my class with a Rothko poster on the wall, where all the others had the Rolling Stones or the Beatles. And I may not have understood his paintings in full at that age but they certainly spoke to me.
Reaching some form of abstraction has taken me a long, long time and it has been an interesting journey. I still do both, the abstracted landscapes and aspects of nature next to the pure abstracts, sometimes the inspiration comes from this side, sometimes from the other.
