Artwork description / Biography
Born 1938. My engineering education I followed in the sixties at the former Higher Technical School in ’s Hertogenbosch, followed by a study at the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam, and combined with an employment at architect Zanstra’s office, first as architectural draftsman and finally as cooperative architect. In 1975 we moved to Apeldoorn where started in 1976 my one man architectural office. Another activity was Kawecon, a consultancy where I developed computer software for the construction industry. I work in stone and wood although stone is only an addition of the last few years. Marble is fantastic to work with, but I like to try all types of stone. My sculptures are made out of marble, alabaster, serpentine, springstone, soapstone, basalt, bluestone, granite, onyx, obsidian, selenite and olivine. Wood is also a great medium to work with. My oldest sculpture is made of an old, partly rotten piece of a wooden beam, that came from a restoration project on a canal house in Amsterdam. Other woods I have worked with are oak, beech, birch, lime, acacia, maple, cherry, pine and balsa. My work is both abstract and figurative. It is the shape I am after. That shape should be exciting and in harmony with the material it is made from. Sometimes I work from a form I have thought of before and tried out in clay, sometimes I search for the shape within the material itself. This is mostly the case with wood or uncut stone. My inspiration often comes from the human body, both male and female. The shapes of a body can create beautiful tense planes and curves that evoke – sometimes erotic – emotions for me. Emotions which I try to capture in the sculpture and so communicate via the sculpture to its spectator. Many of my sculptures are polished or finished smoothly, emphasizing the interaction between shape and material.
