Kees de Voogd

Born in 1953, Bergeyk, the Netherlands.
Studied at the royal academy of fine arts in‘s Hertogenbosch from 1971 to 1976.
Lives and works, since 1992, in Sarrogna France.
Between 1992-2004 founder and organisator of a yearly exposition” art in situ” in the French Jura named “les Doigts d’Art”.
In 1992 founding of a summer academy of painting in Marangea (hamlet of Sarrogna) where I give summer courses since.
Works of me are in private and public collections in France, Germany and the Netherlands.
I started out as a painter with a fine technique and surrealistic ideas.
Around 1980 I wanted to liberate myself of this technique, in need of more free expression.
After experience my works enlarged and the painting became more expressive, slowly the realistic elements disappeared and since the nineties it’s merely abstract.
The gesture as well as the tone of the color and the skin of the painting is important to me.
I experimented with sand tar ashes and sawdust.
Often I paint in thick layers one over the other, but I also like to work in transparent layers.
My work oscillates between moments that I work more freely and expressive and moments that I work more structurated, apparently that belongs to me.
I don’t work in series; each painting is for me a new experience, with as a background everything I did so far.
Sometimes appears a quick made good painting, but mostly it’s along working process out of which I must tear the painting, a working process in which the relationship between the painter and his painting plays a decisive role.
I think a good painting is almost like a living thing, that challenges and intrigues, with a character of its own that forces the viewer to, each time, look at it in a different way.
A good painting never reveals completely its mystery.

About the inspiration
When you work in an abstract way, once in a while the question comes up: do you need a concrete subject and if yes what should it be.
I could adopt the classical subjects (landscape, still live or the female figure), but I don’t feel so narrative, so I asked myself, why not take one of the most basic forms: the rectangle.
This gives me a guide- line and presents several advantages for me.
In my way of painting, I always worked with contrasts, now I can combine my expressivity with the formal of the rectangle
The contrast between expressivity and thoughtfulness fits me very well.
Colour has always been important for me, especially the tonalities and the relations between them.   
The rectangles permit me to express this clearly.
I always worked in different layers, which I can underline with the rectangles.
I am not a geometrical painter, for me it’s another tool to achieve the wanted result.
Suddenly I can paint an ”ordinary” landscape or a human figure and give it another interpretation.
Kees de Voogd