Your works express a complex interplay of visual impressions combined with emotional and spiritual reflection. Can you elaborate on how you achieve this interplay, and how do you hope it impacts the viewer on both an emotional and spiritual level?

Like I mentioned before I always use a particular place as a ‘stage’ for a series. I like to capture my visual impressions with photographs. The interplay develops naturally when these visual impressions connect with the main inspiration of the series and start to guide my feelings and spiritual energy and inspiration.

The inspirations I use are also connected with my own experiences in life or with my research reflecting my desire to grow as a person on a spiritual level. And I mean spiritual growth not in a light-minded way, it is hard work to try to improve as a person.

This hard work is connected with how to navigate in daily life, but also how to navigate within yourself on an emotional and spiritual level. I think this point is also very interesting, how daily life can interfere and connect to the spiritual world and our own spiritual life. I mean don’t get me wrong, I really like to enjoy life as well, to be occupied with lighter and easier subjects in life, but in my studio I am mainly interested in this connection. It is a huge privilege that I can be busy with these kinds of subjects on a daily basis, and my wish is to add something small, but valuable in the life of the viewer.

I hope that all this is coming to fruition in my work, especially in my paintings, because while painting I feel most connected. So I guess I hope that my paintings contain a certain emotional and spiritual energy, intended to channel these energies to the viewer and to invite openness and contemplation.

In your ongoing personal journey to seek meaning in life through art, how has your work evolved over time, and how does each piece contribute to this exploration?

Well that journey is a journey of a lifetime, at least I hope it is granted for me to keep on making art the rest of my life. The development of my artworks are firmly connected with the experiences of my personal life, with the philosophy of life. And I always try to become a better painter, to learn about art history, looking at artworks through all times of history, to improve my mark making. This exploration influences me and my art making.

Every series, every new artwork is an opportunity, to open up, to guide me, to express my feelings and inspirations, and to contemplate. And it definitely is an important outlet for me, if I don’t paint for too long, I get cranky.. I really need to work. For me all these aspects are connected and vital for me.

Your inspiration is drawn from religious and spiritual stories, mythology, mystical places, and the philosophy of life. Can you highlight a particular source of inspiration that has significantly influenced your recent works, and how do you transform these inspirations into contemporary interpretations?

My last series ‘The Alchemy of Dreams’ is more based on my personal experiences in life, to try to make my dreams reality in my life. The book ‘The Alchemist’ by Paulo Coelho helped me to understand that Alchemy can be a metaphor for making something out of nothing, making a dream reality, making the best version of yourself in the process of life.

I do not know exactly how I transform these inspirations into contemporary interpretations, it actually just happens like this. But I think they become contemporary because I also like abstract translations of issues and subjects, and I like and use several painting styles and try to make my own language of it.

I also like the combination of picking very historical themes, letting them connect with my own experiences and reflections, and making a contemporary translation of it.

Another inspiration which has been a source for several recent bodies of works is the island Patmos in Greece. It is the island where Saint John wrote the revelations of the bible, a very difficult text which is hard to fathom. The island is one of the most special places I have ever been, it’s a beautiful place and has a very silent atmosphere and energy while also being very comfortable.

And I get inspired by artworks through art history and try to make an abstract translation of the inspiration. An example of this is the painting ‘The Dream of Angels’. The work is partly based on the schemes of classical paintings where angels are approaching us from heaven, like in the painting ‘The Assumption of the Virgin’ by Peter Paul Rubens (mid 1620s). I translated the angels into two movements, like being the arms of God reaching out to us.

You mention using oil paintings, drawings, and watercolors in your creative process. How do these different mediums contribute to the overall expression of your artistic vision, and do you find that certain themes or ideas lend themselves better to a specific medium?

The most important works of art for me are my paintings. The drawings and watercolours serve as a tool for the paintings. But I try to make them as artworks which can also stand on their own.

I have always liked drawing a lot, because of the directness and speed of working. That’s why I like to use my drawing as studies for the paintings.

The watercolours are also a tool for my paintings, but they lead more of a life of their own, like in the last series, where I explored the Dutch skies in a series of watercolours. I am relatively new in the medium and I am in full exploration of its potential. I really like the speed of working and the directness of the technique. And I am interested in the contrast with the heavy oil painting in terms of materials. This is something I want to develop further in future.

The scale of your paintings is often large, balancing between the figurative and the abstract. How does the size of your artworks play a role in conveying the intended message, and what freedom do you believe it provides to the viewer?

I just love working on a large scale, and it feels natural to me. When I started painting in my youth I started to work on a large scale already (150 x 240 cm!). I love the freedom of a large canvas, the energy you can put into the work, the expression, while this is more difficult for me to put into a smaller canvas. I think it has also to do with the possibilities of mark making on a large canvas. The smaller canvases often have a more intimate character.

The freedom of the gestures in larger canvases is important, while I know that this can also be achieved in smaller works. But to be honest, to me that’s more difficult.

The freedom I like to provide in my work is more clear in my larger works I think, because you can enter the works more easily because of their scale.

Another freedom is the choice to abstract my inspirations to some extent, which leaves more space for expression in terms of mark making, and allows the freedom of the viewer to make their own story with the paintings. I am quite clear about my inspirations, I intend to put everything in the work, but do not like to impose it on the viewer. Having a totally different experience with a work is totally fine for me, who am I to say something about that.

You mention Caspar David Friedrich, Anselm Kiefer, Joan Mitchell, and old masters as influences. In what ways have these artists inspired your work, and how do you incorporate their influences into your contemporary interpretations?

The three mentioned artists all use the landscape as a vehicle to express their message or communicate their intentions, but all in their own way. Joan Mitchell uses the landscape to express feelings, like a poem and she uses gestural abstraction as her painting language. I love her paintings, so bold, direct and poetic at the same time. And her mark making is particularly very interesting for me. Also her love for poetry and music is something I find very interesting in her work. I bought some books of her work to study her mark making in particular.

Anselm Kiefer is one of my favourite artists, and a big source of inspiration for me. The way he uses texture, different materials, composition, architecture and abstract translations of his inspiration is an important source of inspiration for me. How he manages to blend macro and micro focus into his monumental works is mind blowing to me. And I love the way he works, sticking all his source materials on the back of his paintings, his texts, images and so on, like creating storyboards per painting. His use of mythology, literature and poetry is very interesting to me. I stole the idea of using poems as a source of inspiration for my work. And research about the work of Kiefer brought me to the idea to start with watercolours. It is such a poetic combination, the heavy impasto oil paintings and his delicate watercolours. He influenced my mark making as well, I’ve started working with palette knives after diving into his work.

I discovered that Anselm Kiefer also has a connection with Caspar David Friedrich, both working with themes as the futility of mankind and having an interest in the spiritual and the sublime, which are translated into emotional landscapes. Sometimes I use a direct inspiration from an artwork from history as with ‘Monk by the Sea’ by Caspar David Friedrich. I turned that inspiration into a contemporary interpretation in my work ‘Voices from Heaven’ (2016 - 2017).

The old masters remain an important source of inspiration because they have been inspired so much by biblical and spiritual stories. Sometimes I am influenced by the schemes of classical paintings or their source of inspiration as in El Greco’s ‘The Vision of St John’.

For example in the ‘The Dream of Angels’, which is influenced by the schemes of classical paintings where angels are approaching us from heaven. The scheme is inspired by the painting ‘The Assumption of the Virgin’ by Peter Paul Rubens (mid 1620s). I used an abstract translation in terms of meaning and composition. In the work I translated the angels into two movements, like being the arms of God reaching out to us. But you can easily create another story for yourself about the meaning of the painting. I like this freedom in the work, which opens itself and lets you decide what to think.

Your mark making, using brushes and palette knives, ranges from energetic gestural marks to delicate ones. How does your choice of mark making contribute to the narrative or emotion of your paintings, and how do you decide on the appropriate technique for a particular piece?

The mark making is essential in transmitting the energy and meaning of the work. It is really an internal process based on feeling and emotion. During the process I feel like a director who tries to determine what should be an appropriate technique to use. The meaning and feeling of the work guides my choice of mark making. It is a play between ratio and feeling, but in my experience feeling is much more important than ratio. My inspiration or subconscious or what you want to call it is much more intelligent than my mind. The work always becomes better when I let go of too much thinking. Working in the ‘flow’ as Joan Mitchell describes it, is the best, in these painting sessions it all works seamless together. Unfortunately these moments are difficult to have and to keep for a while.

Through time I have noticed that I am building up this internal catalogue of mark making, solutions for the painting process that can help a painting to develop in the right direction. Not that I know so much about art history but every bit of research helps, also just looking at work. In terms of mark making I am also very interested in the work of Zao Wou-Ki, Megan Rooney and Jean-Michel Basquiat.