The Artist

I have had a keen interest in drawing and painting as long as I can remember. Well not quite, it was only as I was about four or five years old that I really took up the goal of becoming a really good artist. Meaning really good at painting horses!

I couldn’t have made a better decision. At least as far as keeping me busy, I’m a lot older now, and still hard at it. And I also am sure that however old I may get I will still have somthing to strive for!

I believe an artist should work with integrity: not follow fashions and fads in the art-world, but express what lives inside you. What you see when you look at the world, or in your mind.

I have gained my bachelors degree in art at the Academy of Art Minerva, in the city of Groningen. At the time of my starting out as an art-student this was virtually the only Art-school in the Netherlands which still taught figurative art. I happen to like figurative art. Minerva at that time had some very excellent teachers I was happy to have the advantage of learning from:  Diederik Kraaijpoel, Matthijs Röling, Wout Muller,

After my bachelors degree I did a masters degree at the Royal College of Art in London.

Why do I paint so many horses?

I paint many different subjects, I do portraits and stil-lives, but the always recurrent theme in my art is horses.

I love horses; they fascinate me. Not only by their generous nature but I think they are perfectly designed. Of all animals (including humans) I think horses have everything right. I can never get tired of the lines of their bodies, the legs, their fluid motions, the way they move their necks.
I am the lucky owner personal assistant of a beautiful Arab horse, named Al Tarq who is a constant inspiration for me.
I take commissions for paintings and portraits. I am also a freelance illustrator, I have worked for magazines and several bookpublishers .