Lenaers.org - Art blog

I have always been a fan of Banksy. The way he connects his work to the surroundings is astonishing. I'm almost as much a Banksy fans as I am a NYC fan.

Interested in seeing those two come together?

I am an autodidact painter. Like with alomost everything, I like to find out stuff myself - don't know where I got that though.
Lately there has been this feeling of unhappiness about my painting. I still loved the paintings I made, but I just couldn't see myself or my technique progressing like it did in the first years. I knew this meant that it was high time to start experimenting.

People who have seen my work in real life know that I'm not very fond of thick layers of paint or coarse brushstrokes. They result in way too much light reflection for my type of work.
For a while I've been wondering if I could get it even thinner and less opaque than it already was. It took a while to find out the exact composition of my painting medium (a hint: it contains varnish, turpentine, linseed oil and a secret ingredient..) only to notice that that wasn't the only key to success.
Even the thickness and colour of the gesso underpaiting is imortant. Hell, even the charcoal sketch could be seen through the end result, so even that had to be fixed by using beige pastel instead.

All in all it's become quite a different approach to oil paint.

Painting the "Mona Lisa" was something I'd been wanting to do for quite some time. I always wondered how the painting would have turned out if Ms Lisa Gherardini had come to me for her commissioned portrait.. This was a good opportunity. The finished painting looked exactly as I intended it. 

"Lisa Gherardini"

But that wasn't enough - I never know when to stop. ;)
For the next canvas I adjusted the mixture of the medium and got to an even better result. It had worn me out completely, but it was well worth it.

Faded man #1

Does this mean the 'old' style is gone and forgotten? Not at all!!
I just need to master as many techniques as possible to make sure that I can express my vision in the best possible way.

Days like these is what I paint for.

Every now and then I need to paint myself. Just because I feel like it.

Quick and dirty, but with interesting use of brush strokes.

You can buy at least ten types of black oil paint, and if you apply any of them to a normal painting, they all look the same - black. Sounds like an interesting starting point to me.
Once you start putting them together you can easily see their minimal differences in opacity and color intensity. It is not easy to paint with black for a whole day - after a while your vision starts playing tricks with you. After finishing it I was left with a serious headache, my eyes were running and with a whole lot of doubt about the result.

Once the upper layer began to dry out and the the different shades became apparent again it started to look good.

As usual it is now temporarily in my living room, drying at room temperature. I must say it's not the most comforting painting to be around, it has a strange aura. Very odd. It changes enourmously with the lighting during the day - one of the reasons I love it most.

Starting 2010 with a few days off work has proven to be a good choice.

Exhibit B: "Closed"

Here's the first painting for 2010.

"One September morning in NYC" refers to 9/11, obviously. But why? 8 years later?

Well, you can blame Hova, Young, Jigga, Jay-Z. Again.
I watched the Fuse TV airing of his Madison Square Garden concert last week.
Besides an excellent show he did make a good point: we should never forget about this!

I know I'm a "middleclass white boy" (if you insist on generalizing/tagging me) living across the ocean. Luckily no one I know has lost anyone because of these attacks. But it did change the world as it is. Forever.
The sheer amount of lives lost on both sides since the start of this Holy War is enourmous.
We will never learn, will we?

"One September morning in NYC"
Dedicated to all lives lost in this new Holy War.