Looking back on 2006

In 2006, I continued working on the series of paintings featuring caravans with which I had graduated a year earlier, and I also started a new series. I took new housing estates, Vinex neighbourhoods, as the starting point for this new series.

After the paintings depicting holiday scenes with identical caravans, the streets with uniform houses felt like a logical continuation.

The title of the painting “Dag Dorkwerd” refers to the small village of Dorkwerd, which is slowly being swallowed up by the city of Groningen, which you can see advancing behind the cornflowers. The Dutch 'Dag' can mean as well 'Hello' as 'Goodbye'. The title “78 homes and 30 vacant lots” is taken from the text on a large billboard in a meadow near Baflo, a village in northern Groningen where I lived at the time and where construction of a new neighbourhood began that year.

This painting with two caravans is the largest painting I have ever made. In terms of transport and storage, it was extremely awkward, which I think is a very bad reason not to make more large works, but from a practical point of view, I do take it into account. Fortunately, this work has had a nice permanent home at TRIP Advocaten Notarissen for a long time, for which I am still very grateful.

1.        No title, oil on canvas, 160 x 180 cm, 2006

2.        No title, oil on canvas, 40 x 50 cm, 2006

3.        ‘Hello/Goodbye Dorkwerd’, oil on canvas, 90 x 130 cm, 2006

4.        Spacious semi-detached house 2, oil on canvas, 40 x 60 cm, 2006

5.        ruime twee-kapper, oil on canvas, 90 x 130 cm, 2006

6.        'Hello/Goodbye...', oil on canvas, 60 x 90 cm, 2006

7.        Urban labyrinth, oil on canvas, 100 x 90 cm, 2006