Karel Stoop   -   Statement

 

As my thoughts are mostly multi-thoughts and as my feelings are mostly multi-feelings, I allow my visions being changeable and flexible. So as well is my artistic work..

I cannot tell you what I will do tomorrow . I can only tell that I am anxious to discover what I will do and if it will be interesting. Often it does not depend of me. It depends of what I find and what I give value on a certain moment. It is nearly a happy coincidence of many factors if I consider an artwork as succeeded. Nearly I may call it a kind of magic that converts a work in a present from nowhere.

Anyway a certain undefined “theme” is always present in what I do. I could call it a vague sense of Identity that penetrates invisibly in all works that are remaining as finished.

Painting for me forms part of everyday life and is not more exceptional than al what is surrounding me. It really forms part and the same I do not know what i will have for lunch tomorrow, I do not know either what I will paint and what I discover. I do not know before the emotions that a day will bring me, nor the things that will happen around me.

I can not say either that my works are completely casuality. Many years of life and experience bear plenty of emotions and memories. I always take these with me and they have an influence in all what I am doing. Also my childhood and all people I met in my life are somehow an influence and inspiration that is present in my inconscience.

Also certain artists  have been of influence in my artistic development.

Not only some leading artists I could meet in person many years ago like Antoni Tapies, Louis de bourgois and Karel Appel. Also the plenty of emerging artists from different origins I meet with frequency are of a great influence. And even the old masters like Rembrandt and Vermeer are present in my roots.  In fact it are not only the works of other artists that inspire me. It is above all their way of being authentique and create their world in spite of society.

Anyway it is difficult to figure out which of the mix of influences have made me the way I am actually. If I must give a certain direction of sense to my works I would use the words - 4th dimension, universe, time, space , life and identity.

I feel best creating works of large format and experiment with new techniques and materials.

I actually use pigments, water, oil, canvas and paper. I feel happy when the nature is playing with my works and make them old and strange when they are laying in the rain or spend the winter outside in the garden. After I give them a retouch as confirming my agreement with what the

nature had done with my initial works.   This retouching is becoming rather habitual and is taking away the barrier of time, the way that I can now finish, change or improve a work that I made 15 years ago.