'East from the Sun and West from the Moon'

My work is currently on show at the Kunsthof in Appingedam together with that of Beth Wong. With this, De Kunsthof presents the second duo exhibition with work by two generations of northern artists. Beth Wong graduated from the Frank Mohr Institute in Groningen in 2023. I graduated from the University of the Arts in Arnhem in 2005.

In this exhibition I show work from the two series I have been working on in recent years: the one with postcards of artworks and the one with origami animals. The postcard series mainly has titles that are derived from song lyrics, which made me look for a suitable song lyric for the title of the exhibition. I ended up with 'East from the Sun and West from the Moon' by Diana Krall. Beth comes from Hong Kong and now works in the Netherlands. The life and landscape here are reflected in her work. I am Dutch and I am inspired by Asia: origami, Japanese paper, Japanese prints. This cross-pollination is in the East and West in the title. I also find the title very poetic and our work has that too.

I see in Beth's work a similar kind of abstraction as in my own work. Elements from the landscape are omitted, shapes simplified and details missing. There are large areas of color and strongly simplified, characteristic shapes. And although Beth uses a different palette, with more pastel shades, I see a similarity in the absence of the use of hard primary colors and a preference for a certain softness, harmony.

One of Beth’s first works I came into contact with was Road trip. It is a 45 x 80 cm painting with a lonely house or barn more or less in the middle, painted in blue, green and brown grey tones. Less than a third of the painting is landscape, the rest is sky. Lots of sky. On Instagram , Beth posted a short video of this place, near Nice, filmed in passing. It’s nice to see how she started from here and where it led, how she created her own image of it. The painting, but also the entire translation, reminds me a lot of one of the first caravan paintings I made and with which I graduated, 20 years ago already.

left: Beth Wong, Road trip, Acrylic, gouache and pencil on canvas, 45 x 80 cm , 2023

Right: 'Hello Swan', oil on canvas, 70 x 70 cm, 2024

'East from the Sun and West from the Moon' can be visited until July 5.