"Escalator"

"Cuttings M.P."

"Caravan"

Pierre P., unremarkable and silent; slightly hunched, cap on head, coughing and constantly rubbing his eyes and clearing his throat to ease the pain, always drew a picture of a caravan.

With a fruit tree on one side and a bush and/or a man or a horse on the other side, a sun in the left-hand corner and two clouds.
Whatever the size of his paper, whether pencil, crayon or paint, the picture was almost always the same.Sometimes the caravan was replaced by a house, or is it a mobile home?Occasionally he modelled a pot or a cup, or worked on the loom, in an attempt to divert him/inspire him to work on a new subject or use different work forms, but he always returned to his favourite subject.

And thus this series of watercolours came about.

Sometimes I gave him free rein; on other occasions I asked him to work with primary or complementary colours or in black and white; to mix colours or strongly dilute the paint; or to make a modern or abstract variant of the subject or to incorporate it in a quadruptych.

And still he continued to revert to the pure, unmixed use of the paint with the caravan as his subject.
In contrast to his sombre appearance, Pierre’s paintings are childishly fresh and cheerful.

While working on this series, he was told that his own caravan had burned down!“Where truth ends, Art begins”
“It is only real if it is Art” seem to be rather contradictory statements, but could these paintings by Pierre P. be portents, preliminary paintings of premonitions?

Hans Hobeyn September 2007.

 

 

“Two chinamen”

 

The two chinamen painted in red oil paint against a black background is one of the few pieces of work I found when I started working here. It must therefore have been painted before 1975. It has hung on almost every thinkable wall in the institution. It started on a wall in the office that belonged to the submanager, from where it moved on to some obscure rooms and eventually it ended up in the rubbish bin. Yet it always came back to me, apparently because it has the kind of magic that pieces of art need to survive. So it was not lost, and now it has been framed. Because of its unusual history it has a special place in our collection.

 

 

 

 

“Poacher and hound”

From the seventies on, this man painted several pieces, all having the same subject. In these days there were still poachers in prison. Nowadays it seems a dying race, although one never can tell what is going to happen. This small piece of art is painted on white chipboard in the so-called salt enamel technique, which is a technique of imitation enamel on resin basis and in my view it belongs to naïve painting. The painter was arrested at least fifty times for poaching and on one occasion he even shot a forester instead of the game he intended to hit.

 

 

 

 

"Bekijk het maar (Suit yourself)"

 

Henk painted like a madman, sometimes two paintings a day, big or small. So it was not hard to make an exhibition of his work. He copied all kinds of things from books and magazines and made a paste-up of what he had found. But he used his own imagination as well. The exhibition was named after the first painting, “Bekijk het maar”, which means ‘suit yourself’, but also ‘look for yourself’. This painter was much admired, but he took most of his work home. Only this small piece was left.

 

 

 

 

“Staying behind”

 

Huseyn too became an enthusiast after a few lessons. During his six years in prison he made about 400 fine paintings and large drawings, most of them using coloured pencil. They were all sent to his home, and his family organised an exhibition of them and had a book published about his work. He knew nothing about painting when he started: “I cannot paint but I do want to learn, so let’s begin”. From the very first day he had a style of his own. I tried not to spoil it, but I did teach him several techniques. His own country and especially politics were his subjects. This is one of his first paintings, and one of the few he left behind.