Gijs van Lith grew up in Breugel, a small village near Eindhoven (NL). From an early age, he was always drawing and building things - mostly large drawings of marvel comics like Spiderman and Cable. He and his Dad had a small shed where they each had their own workbench... his first ever shared studio. And today, he can still remember that wonderful smell of tires, wood and iron.
Once Gijs completed high school, he knew he was destined to work with his hands and do something creative. And so he enrolled at St. Lucas in Boxtel, (NL), where he studied paint-technology and also how to build, sustain and design buildings. However it was during his time at the Art Academy (AKV St. Joost, ‘s-Hertogenbosch) where his love for creating art really came into its own. After graduating from the academy in 2008, he was nominated for a few art prizes and was invited to participate in a number of gallery shows. But the cherry on the top for him was that the (then) Queen Beatrix of Holland, became one of his first important collectors. A flying start to his art career indeed.
“I like the callus on my hands”, says Gijs
Untitled no.6 , 2016
Oil, acrylic & spray paint on linen
95 H x 75 W cm
His main focus is on painting and it’s fundamentals, but his body of work also entails sculptures and installations. His work is all about the creation, the activity, and the actual process of painting. Gijs works systematically and in serial order. In his work, he explores ideas about surface, materiality, spatiality, physicality and time. Often interests in (art-) history, theoretical views, movies and sports surfaces in his work especially in the titles. Questions like:
What is the length of a painting and does a painting end? Where and what are the physical limitations of the painting and the surface, what do these limitations mean and what do they offer to explore further?
Where boredom, chaos, energy and intuition melt together
When Gijs creates art, he has periods of play and alchemist exploration. He finds new and interesting materials and/or colour-combinations. He describes this creative state of mind as a ‘constructive nonchalance’ state, which leads to new small try-outs and tests.
According to Gijs, his studio is not just a place of origin but it is the natural habitat of his work. Here it can be seen in its most honest and ‘unstable’ state - as part of an on-going process. He translates this idea in the context of a gallery through creating large transparent plastic bubbles, which he paints from the inside out. These monumental balloon-sculptures become metaphors for the microcosm of his studio. Here, the broader universe of the artist is somewhat made ‘concrete’ and ‘stable’ in the act of applying paint on a surface.
Gijs also organises and curates exhibitions at Art Spaces and sometimes at Galleries. For him, this a great way to meet other artists and get to really know their work and their thought process. Mo van der Have, (Director Torch Gallery) and Gijs are currently working together on an exciting exhibition which will open in November.
To view or purchase works by Gijs van Lith, click here
From the Arnhem Museum to the Dutch Embassy in Tokyo ... this artist’s artwork has travelled far
“In my imagination, anything is possible”
- Louise te Poele
Louise te Poele grew up in De Achterhoek in The Netherlands, on her parent’s farm. She tells us that besides from the beautiful scenery, there was so much to do. She felt like Lord and Master in a virtually empty universe. As a young girl, Louise once said to her mother, “Mom, I discovered something, there is no difference between the Bible and Pinkeltje (children’s book), they are both just stories”. Her mother laughed and said she was right and from that very day, she started creating her own picture stories. Her fantasy at that time was overflowing, resulting in creating things like a monkey on a transparent string, floating in a bottle as if it were hovering.
Young Louise often got piles of art books from the library and sat there browsing through them night after night. After graduating from ArtEZ, she immediately got asked to become ‘an artist in residence’ at Schloss Ringberg in Germany and since, works independently in her own studio.
MATERIALS, THEMES AND PROCESS
Absolutely anything can inspire Louise’s photographs and 3D work. Important themes are usually personal stories, the seventeenth century or contemporary issues about waste and the environment.
She uses materials such as litter, a flapping piece of plastic, bent straws, a stuffed animal, a decoration here or there. Everything is selected with the utmost care and chosen so that it can become impermanent, blewn away or dead. But before that happens; with the right lighting, composition and shutter speed, Louise allows the viewer to see the best side of her ‘temporary universe’.
There are two different ways in which Louise creates her work. She lets herself be led by her intuition in her still life’s or she has no plan at all and by feeling, creates something spontaneously. In her 3D installations, while starting with a plan in mind, she still leaves the creative process very open in order to allow for moments of magic to happen.
‘Yellow’, 2016
150x100 cm
Ultra chrome print on dibond
Edition 1/5 + 2AP
Courtesy of Torch Gallery
Line grew up in the Norway country side, surrounded by nature. Here, she developed a curiosity for her surroundings, and later, for people’s behaviour. This lead her to study and produce captivating layered paintings, that have been sold in Norway and to collectors world wide.
“The ego is in an unpleasant state... something haunting is about to happen”
-Line Gulsett
Line believes that growing up in nature was a great gift and that this connection to nature was ultimately the nurturing of her creativity and self reflection. Her ‘curiosity of surroundings’ is something that she explored during her studies in sociology and then later in her art.
Line has always been drawing ever since she was a kid. She started her art studies in Denmark, Copenhagen in a classical drawing school at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek and then went further to do an old Master/student style of studio training with an artist in Copenhagen. Here she learned the old school way to make her own paint, canvas, and gained an understanding of traditional painting skills.
Later on, Line decided to try something different and enrolled in a course at a pre-academic school, Billedeskolen in Copenhagen. After graduating here, she was then accepted to study at The Royal academy of fine arts in the Hague (KABK).
“Inspiration is a complex matter”
Line: When it comes to inspiration, I don’t have a specific thing- it can be a word, news, or just my own imagination which creates interesting experiences to be taken further. As a painter, you are often bound to your studio and it is here, where you must be a friend to loneliness. But also, here, is where I experience my mind’s ultimate freedom
The theme that is constant Line’s work is social behaviour, often looking at it on a micro level. What interests her is the collective memory of kids or young adults as it is here where they first develop their sociological behaviour and habits and where the recognition of the ego is most present in an ‘unheimlich way’ (the psychological concept of the uncanny as something that is strangely familiar).
“It starts with making sketches”
For a long time, Line develops ideas in her head and then when she is ready, she often starts with sketches in order to develop these ideas into something visual. Eventually, her works become removed from her initial idea as she attempts to make the process and outcome as open as possible.
So, her work goes from personal to perhaps more general and then back to personal, getting the viewer to look more than once. Line finds that her work is often full of contradictions and she finds these sort of contradictions in painting can be really interesting and powerful. That a painting can go from figuration to abstraction and in some cases, just simple materials, makes for a sense of trembling underneath the painterly surface.
For her drawings, she often uses coloured papers and oil pastels. For the paintings, she uses oil paint on canvas. Recently she has started experimenting with raw pigments on different painted surfaces.
‘Went too Far’, 2016
Oil pastel on black paper
63 x 45 cm
Courtesy of Torch Gallery
Click here to view more works by Line Gulsett
Text by Georgia Fane Hervey
Pictures by Iris Haverkamp Begemann
