Introduction
I am an artist. That’s not only a profession, but also a mentality. Based on that mentality I have done related things, such as designing for theater and making monumental art. But mostly I make paintings, because I feel most comfortable when there are as few steps as possible between me and the result. The biggest difference between painting and many other techniques is that you can always change something on a painting. The image you initially have in mind can turn into something entirely different during the process of making it. I think that’s the biggest advantage of this technique.
A Painting
What is a painting, in fact? Robert Henri (influential American painter and teacher, 1865-1929) called it “An Organization of Paint on Canvas”. All right, but what kind of organization? The surrealist André Breton wrote that impressions from the outside are stored in the unconscious and re-emerge through language, sounds or images (Surrealist Manifesto, 1924). When someone once asked Picasso why his painted tree didn’t look like a tree, he answered: “Because it’s my own tree. A tree that obeys my laws.”
A ‘Presence’
My paintings are not vehicles for interpretation. In other words, I don’t use them to tell something. Or to interpret what I see. They are in the first place ‘things’, or independent, self-contained presences. Objects, in other words, consisting of paint on canvas stretched on a frame. Something is usually happening on those canvases, however. They are not abstract, because they are the reflection of an entire life of looking and, not least of all, they are based on the work of others who came before me. Sometimes they are very concrete – a house, a tree, an animal. But they always obey the laws I prescribe.
The Big
I sometimes used to have difficulties accepting the limitations of painting, the flat surface, the square or rectangle. That’s why I not only studied Painting at the Academy but also Monumental Art, motivated by the urge to surround the viewer, as it were, with my work. On commission from the Dutch national and municipal governments, I made wall paintings, mosaics and reliefs in concrete, and collaborated on projects in which I helped design the architectural space from my perspective as a visual artist.
The Small
Now I am just trying to make a ‘Good Painting’. A good ‘Organization of Paint on Canvas’. A painting based on my own laws, on principles of form, color and composition. And who knows, maybe something else will emerge – that which is inexpressible.
Niels Hamel