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Abstract portraits
This is a series I painted between 1990 and now. The idea evolved when I made some realistic portraits, based on photo's and after models. When someone asked me to paint a portrait of his wife I asked if I could make it an abstract one. I never got round to doing it (This was around 1987) but I kept thinking about the idea. Finally it got more form and after doing a few studies I started painting abstract portraits of some of the people I knew at the time. The basic form is like a kite, reminiscent of one of Mondriaan's works. Inside the kite is the inward part of a person, outside the kite the way someone behaves or is perceived by the outside world. What I did when painting one of these pictures is trying to get a clear emotional picture of the person I was painting in my mind. From that idea the painting slowly evolved, sometimes taking a few months to complete, and sometimes much shorter. You can clearly see I am influenced by someone like Rothko in the painting shown here, because of certain smooth colorchanges in the picture. I think this is no coincidence. Rothko was working on moodreflecting or moodchanging paintings. Other influences are the geometrical abstract works of for instance Antoine Pevsner. I considered naming this style of Geometric Expressionist. Of course it's up to our art-historians.