Tell us about yourself…
My favourite colour is napthol crimson and I ride a Harley Davidson Switchback.
Born in Geleen, Holland, I came to Australia on the ship the Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, heading to Brisbane by way of the West African Coast, Freemantle and Sydney.
My wife and I have three children and I have one brother and two sisters who also live in Australia.
I date the start of my serious involvement in art to the 1970s, but I have made stuff up for as long as I can remember.
From constructing boats out of balsa wood on a small table in the hallway to losing my footy boots out of the train window on the way home from school, to being a bank teller to driving Brisbane Council buses. Followed by a job at TAFE.
What’s your most memorable arts or cultural experience?
Attending a recital given by Michael Nyman and his band at QPAC and seeing works by Frank Auerbach at the TATE in London. Both are contemporary and both have deep arts-theoretical underpinnings. They’re realist-abstract-conceptual and super inspiring.
And although it sounds like two, music and art go together so it’s really one.
Who inspires you?
Anyone inspires me who gets things done and has something to say that pushes ideas.
But after all is said and done, and in the fullness of time, if I have to nominate one person who inspires me at the moment it would be Anselm Kiefer or Emma Thorp or Tracey Emin or Damien Hirst or Jeff Koons or Guido Maestri or Gareth Sansom or Rick Amor or Benjamin Bratton or Kate Crawford or Stephen Edgar or Jeroen van Veen or Larry Siedentop or Jesus.
However, tomorrow will be a different day and probably a different inspiration.
Where do you feel most at home?
I am an immigrant, uprooted from his birthplace and dispossessed of all he held dear, and whose feelings about being transported were overlooked, teased by the locals of his new ‘home’ because of how he spoke and what he wore, never again to see his grandparents… but in spite of all that, enamoured of the landscape of his new place and well fed by its offerings, opportunities and abundances.
Although the idea of feeling most at home somewhere specifically/architecturally/locally doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, I will say that I feel most at home wherever it is that I can get on with something artistic.
When is your next exhibition?
My art show “Eat the moon (this is not a dystopian parable)” opens at The HBRG on February 23 and it’s free.
I’d like to invite everyone to come along and see paintings, drawings and a group of dizzying/dazzling sculptures that people will find provocative and fun.
The exhibition will be opened by David Lewis and the catalogue essay written by Joseph Breikers.