TrendWarriors

Interview with José Heerkens, visual artist
The Netherlands

http://www.joseheerkens.nl/

http://www.geoform.net/

Zeeland NB, February 2008

(Background: I met Jose Heerkens, in 2005 at a Dutch Colour Society meeting in the Netherlands. Both of us were impressed with each other’s involvement in color. We immediately struck up a correspondence surrounding travel, art, landscapes, pass times and of course, color! In 2006 Jose published a book on her work called Horizon. I enjoyed reading her impressions of people and places she has visited and how they affected her art and life).

Trend Warriors: It is always interesting how people get started in their particular paths in life. How did you start yours as a visual artist?

Jose Heerkens: Born in a village in the south east of The Netherlands I looked at the rhythm of the trees, the colors and forms of the ploughed fields, the water in the ditches and listened how the people talked and saw how they built and worked. I think the need to understand life is the first step. At the Academy of Art and Design in s-Hertogenbosch (Noord Brabant) I had my education in the art of painting from 1979 to 1984.

TW: Creative people find different sources for inspiration. For some it is people, for others nature or music or experiencing life. At the moment, what do you consider inspirational for your work ?

JH: Space fascinates me. The enormous space that is spread out in landscapes, that unrolls over the earth, is my greatest inspiration. I am astonished by its wideness and silence, by the beauty of endlessness. Space has many levels, light is another level than sound and another than the virtual space. The search for light has come into my work prominently throughout the years. My paintings have become a place where space and light meet each other and here color is the most important instrument to visualize the light.

I search for the life and human on one side and the geometry, the universal standard, on the other side. There is a constant dialogue between construction and intuition. I both need them in my try to understand.

Light and space belong to the art of painting since ages and at the same time they are primary needs to live. Both points of view I keep in mind.

Since a trip through Australia in 1992, the fascination for space has become inescapable and the line became my tool to give form to the space I had seen.

Distributed Light II, 2007, 150 x 150 cm, oil on linen

TW: We share the same experience of being deeply impressed with the Australian landscape. There are wide open places like this in the country where I live, but I think they are harder and harder to find. What else did you find so original about Australia?

JH: Here I experienced the landscape as an immense empty plain, the horizon is low, a straight horizontal line and all this land is covered by an age-old undisturbed silence. The bright light forces you to look very carefully. Small critters moving across the red ground. The air is quivering, it moves and all this in near silence. I was deeply touched by this space.

TW: Relationships with color are personal. What colors are you most attracted to these days? Do you ever find you tire of a color and want to try something new?

JH: Several years I worked with reds, browns, blacks, ochre’s. Those colors carry a feeling of earth, of warmth, volume. During the process of years of painting the relation with land and landscape disappeared. Also the earth-related colors fall into the background. Since the year 2000 all colors came in sight and with this large palette came the different sorts of light. Color is light and space and the line has become carrier of colour, light and space.

The context I am looking for is important. It is hard to explain exactly why I choose certain colors and a certain combination. In their relations colors can both weaken and enhance one another. When diverse colors are put together I search the spatial context. Color and space have to fit together. I continue to modify and change colors until there is a dialogue between them. I think the choice of color is based on the individual as well as on a collective spectrum.

Refraction II – 7, 2007, 35 x 35 cm, oil on linen

TW: Placement of color in your paintings helps the viewer experience wonderful moods, and effects. How do you approach using color when you work?

JH: Color has that fabulous quality to transfer the light and the feeling of cool and warm, of close and far away. Every color carries its own space and its specific character, I use these qualities in my work. Like the space of lemon-yellow is hard to tame while the earth-colors are close and reachable. There are many systems to arrange the colors, but the choice to use certain colors is subjective after all. Even if color is used in harmony or in contradiction, I strive after oneness and balance.

Partition II-4, 2007, 25 x 28 cm, oil on linen

TW: How do you work on your paintings?

JH: My paintings lay on the ground. I set up a first layer and decide the second one. So I build up from the back to the front. Every step is a choice. The choice has to be taken out of many possibilities and the broad path on which I started becomes more narrow during the process. I try to keep the layers clear and transparent to get an open image. The thoughts and choices are the “language” of a painter and the possibility to communicate with the spectator. The choice for color has an important voice in this communication.

Luminous Square IV, 2007, 70 x 70 cm, oil on linen