Henk van Vessem

Henk van Vessem is an artist who paints with bold strokes in starkly contrasting colors—at least as far as his canvases are concerned. His pastels are of a more gentle nature and feature softer colors. In his drawings, the images become almost transparent, and the emotional qualities of color give way to the spiritual qualities of transparent colors.

The images on the canvases are sculpted with paint and a palette knife into expressionist landscapes, in which no fields or roads are to be seen, but rather the signs of mental reflections. The artist does not shy away from reversing the question-and-answer dynamic, as evidenced by the title of one painting: “The Water Asks About Time.”

The painting “The Horizon Has Become Water” does not convey the atmosphere of a waterlogged plain, but rather possesses the opposite quality of a vast sandy expanse shimmering with heat. The longing for water distorts perception and creates a mirage.

Time, space, and matter become expressions of inner imagination in Henk van Vessem’s art. Perception takes place “beneath the foliage of your hair,” as the title of one canvas suggests. Contrary to what this title might suggest, the artist’s thoughts are clearly articulated in his paintings and expressed in brilliant colors.

“Above our heads stands a sun of fiery thoughts.” A sentence could not sound more melodious, and the painting bearing this title depicts fire as the source of new arrangements and possibilities in a world of familiar interpretations.

Color and form succeed, through their mutual interplay, in interpreting a world of meanings that is boundless—or, to put it another way, less constrained than spoken language—to speak “for itself.”