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In the beginning, a white canvas is very intimidating.
I wouldn't know what to paint on it, so I'd rather attack it.
But the first thing to do is to add water...
almost as if you are sowing. You sow and you reap.
You have to give something to the painting to get something back.
But it's funny. This is a perfect example of coincidence.
I may use that in the end painting, but, very likely, I can also destroy it.
But these particular coincidences do create interesting imagery.
And I really like to stay open to that and be receptive to what's there.
It's really like a dialogue. It's not: I put my will on the painting.
I do something, the painting does something,...
it talks back to me, I respond to that.
The process of creating is really an organic process.
It's like a surprise for me too.
And part of my job as an artist is to remain receptive to that.
To remain sensitive to these subtle signals.
Like in life.
To break this orange and to add something to the layer...
and have some sort of interaction between two colours...
I'm just going to add a little black.
What I really like is that you see all this water here. This is still super wet.
If I add something else, you see it really... But this is very careful.
I want to do it not so careful. I want to do it brutal.
This is always very exciting...
because the canvas dries up in a way that I don't know beforehand.
You just saw me making these orange lines and a little bit of black...
and now, all of a sudden, it moved to the centre.
This is what I try to portray with water.
It sort of goes there, it dries up and it leaves a trace.
But I don't know how it originated. It just happens that way.
So the big motion and the coincidence is part of the interaction.
This orange is a very strong and bright colour.
And I want to make a contrast.
The free space that's created now will get its first direction.
I'll put some influence... Some way I want it to be.
Whether I have forms in my head?
No, I don't. I actually try to leave my head out as much as I possibly can.
So, these are small elements. I need one big one.
The funny thing with water is you need it for everything.
For the seas, for life, for painting.
I see painting very much like life.
What happens now is that the white paint will sort of eat away the blue-grey paint.
So if I were to make this run now, tilt it, it will go that way.
Then it will eat away some of the blue. But not all.
I don't know exactly how it will turn out.
Although I sort of know what will happen, because I anticipate on it.
Here you can see how the water takes away the blue...
and it mingles again with the other layer.
Mind you, none of this will actually show in the final painting...
but the remnants of it, the feeling of it, will. It's a stage.
If it doesn't serve the entire painting, then it's loose aestheticism.
What you can see is this texture that I did with all these layers...
with the lacquer and the paint reacting with each other.
Now I create an entirely different layer which is fully separate from the other one.
So, there's a strong discrepancy. Or a strong foreground-background.
Let's see if I can make it an ellipse planet.
The beautiful thing about organic structures is that they are universal.
If you see a brain, you see a coral.
All the structures, all the lines, the cell structure.
Or even when you look through a microscope, you see a micro cosmos.
All these shapes are so universal.
When you look through a telescope, you see things 1000 times bigger...
and it's still the same shapes.
Now, I'm going to add sand.
I use sand, because the texture of the sand...
will make the paint go in a different direction.
It's a small canvas, so I'm trying this out.
I leave space for things to go wrong as well.
But it so happens that I did one yesterday...
which should be ready now.
Here you can see how I painted this with lacquer. The whole thing was blue.
Added with black, it sort of takes the pigment away.
In this particular case, the drops take the paint with them.
So, this surface is paint on canvas, this surface is lacquer.
On the lacquer, it will react differently.
All these in between stages are beautiful too.
So it's important not to get too attached to something beautiful that happens.
We saw yesterday, when I did the other painting...
how these organic shapes make a really strong statement in the painting.
It's not the final work, but it is giving direction to where it wants to go.
And this is far too black.
I need the black as a supporting colour to give the painting a backbone...
but I will destroy it again.
What I really like to do is to create more colours in one go...
so that when it dries up, it leaves a subtle trace.
Now some grey, which is a very rich colour.
Very often you think of grey as a dull colour...
but the truth is, bright colours come out much more beautifully...
if there are dull colours, very much like grey, in their direct surroundings.
I'm really looking at what the paining does.
I just completely destroyed it and it starts talking back, the water starts to run.
I see a landscape, I see water.
But it's very important that I did this...
so now these shapes are more held by the entire painting.
The overall feel is more solid.
It's not anymore a shape here, a shape there.
It's now really a wholeness.
So, rather than trying to copy nature...
I see myself as a catalyst.
I have all these impressions...
and I just store them and see them when I close my eyes.
And then that feeling rather than that imagery...
goes back to the canvas.
And as a result of that, the imagery supports that feeling.
So, rather than going out and paint nature...
I absorb nature and give it back to the canvas...
and hopefully get some of that back from the canvas.
The beauty of Van Gogh Acrylics is that it dries really fast.
If you don't want that, you add water, but if you do want that, like I do now...
then it's really nice.
So, all these lines are twice white and twice pink.
I really like that, because these lines are all horizontal.
And this one just goes slightly against that motion.
I just removed the tape.
And you may wonder why I actually left all these spaces open.
There's a particular reason for that.
If I were to paint a plant over these pink lines...
you would see the line through the paint.
Which is really ugly. It doesn't serve the painting.
So this is where technique comes in.
And I really want to make sure...
that the feeling of the plant being all the way in front...
really shows naturally.
Even though this part of the work is more silent, more refined and more particular...
I still let the brush do all the talking. So, I sort of follow the lead.
Because I really like what happens, what the brush does.
This curiosity is really there, in the painting itself.
And I suppose it's there in life in general.
Why do things happen?
I stay curious about it. Like: Why do I get upset?
Why do I love my girlfriend so much? What is it she does, what is it that I do?
In what state am I myself...
when something agreeable happens to me?
The thing is, I use these yellow ochres, which are more earthy colours...
but then adding a little white gives you the shine...
and adding a little yellow, makes it less brown.
But these plants are green.
So, how does it serve the plant to be painted with ochre and yellow?
It will, because in the end, these yellows will make the green look fresher.
I always paint the light bits first, because the light is easy to cover...
but darkness, if I were to use a darker green...
you cannot cover it.
Here you see how important it is that if I wouldn't have taped those pink lines...
then they would really show and it would be annoying.
Here you can really see what the oil does.
How nice and thick and how beautiful it contrasts...
against the acrylic background and the watery world.
I really like mixing paint while painting.
That way it's not so static.
It becomes more dynamic. It becomes more in your face.
I'm going to use the direction to try and make it plantlike.
Although it's not about becoming a plant.
It's about becoming an interesting painting.
So, in that sense, the brush stroke is as important as what it depicts.
There was an artist living below us.
Even though in my youth I didn't think much of it...
he really taught me how to perceive nature in a more magical way.
That was really his gift...
to make me realize the beauty of everything that surrounds me.
Anutosh Oldenzaal - The Netherlands - 1970
Anutosh is an impressive painter.
His way of working takes you on a voyage of discovery.
His background as graffiti artist is immediately recognizable.
The use of water plays a highly significant role in his process.
He challenges the viewer to fantasize with him and to keep looking at his work.
'I love it when my colleagues wonder how I made the painting.'
Anutosh's studio is in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
He is very fond of working with Van Gogh products.
He mainly uses acrylic paint and for some accents, oil paint.
Van Gogh. That's me.