In Paul Butzelaar’s studio

“I actually sort of stumbled into art. As a child, I was always building and tinkering. I made intricate wooden games, constructions with glass plates and dioramas in which mirrors created a sort of endless perspective. When I applied for admission to the Gerrit Rietveld Academy around 1981, I simply took everything I’d made with me: a huge amount of boxes, folders and objects. Apparently it was quite a lot, because they even had to borrow tables from another admissions panel to lay everything out. It must have helped, because I was admitted. 

Yet things didn’t go smoothly at the academy straight away. I actually knew quite early on that I wanted to be a painter, but the first year was very broadly structured and consisted mainly of assignments that didn’t appeal to me and had little to do with painting. I had a tendency to sabotage those assignments and do my own thing, which didn’t always go down well. After a year, I left and eventually ended up at the Minerva Academy in Groningen, where I was fortunately able to join in the second year.
But even there, I didn’t get on well with the school system and it was often a frustrating time. There was, however, one important lesson that has stayed with me ever since: just keep going. Work, keep working, and don’t let yourself get discouraged too quickly. Perhaps what I learnt most there is that you need to have a sort of thick skin, otherwise you won’t make it in the art world. You have to keep doing what you do, even if it doesn’t work out straight away or if someone criticises it.  

When I left the academy in 1987, the real work actually only began. You realise then that there is still an awful lot you have to figure out for yourself. I’d never even learnt practical things, such as how to stretch a canvas. At the academy, you mainly painted on cardboard or hardboard and were much more focused on developing your own artistic practice. After graduating, I set up a small studio at home and tried to gradually build up a practice. My first exhibition was in a café-restaurant, and from there everything grew steadily and I got more and more exhibitions."

"The human body has always played a central role in my work. During my time at Minerva, I drew a lot from life, and at first that often went wrong. There were some good pieces, but also many drawings that simply didn’t work. That frustrated me, but it also made me a bit stubborn: I was determined to understand and capture that model.

In the early nineties, I had a studio in a former factory in Peize. There, I started inviting models myself. That was sometimes a rather chaotic period. Students would tip off other students, and sometimes someone would turn up at the door in the morning whom I didn’t know exactly who they were. Over time, I realised it worked much better if I painted people I knew, such as friends or regular models. When you know someone a little, it just works differently. During the break you sit and chat, and afterwards you might have a glass of wine together. The fact that someone is posing naked then becomes almost a matter of course. What matters is that you can work at ease and observe properly; that benefits the work.

With these paintings, my aim was to capture the person, as it were, to truly portray someone in their entirety. I actually only managed to do that when someone was completely naked. For a while, I produced large-scale figure paintings, sometimes on canvases over two metres high. I always found that a wonderful way of working. A canvas of that size forces you to paint physically. You’re not fiddling about with tiny brushes, but laying down large areas and working with your whole body. It remains special to see how a painting slowly begins to take shape during the process. I don’t work according to a set pattern or a fixed path, and so it’s an exciting process every time to reach that goal. Every beginning is new, and that makes it both exciting and, at times, a gruelling process for me. You only know when a drawing or painting is finished by instinct. It’s hard to put into words, but sometimes you simply sense that a drawing is right, without being able to explain exactly why. The work must be able to stand on its own, and you feel when that point in the process has been reached. 

At the same time, drawing has remained just as important to me. Life drawing is, first and foremost, a way of keeping your eye trained. By doing it over and over again, week after week, year after year, you stay engaged and continue to develop as an artist. Although I have been doing this for over thirty years and thought I had reached my peak and that my work could not develop much further, I noticed whilst selecting work for the exhibition ‘Meters maken’ at Podium Zuidhaege that my drawings have continued to change over the past six years. The lines have become firmer and the forms clearer."

"As well as working with models, I also paint landscapes. I started doing this more seriously in the 1990s, when I spent a long time in the south of France. Sitting out there in the landscape, feeling the sun and trying to paint that light is anything but easy; in fact, it is endlessly challenging. At first, I didn’t manage it very well at all. Someone once said to me that my paintings still had that ‘Dutch light’, even there in France. I found that rather irritating at the time, but later I understood what he meant. It took some time before I truly found the light in those paintings, and I have since developed a palette with which I can paint and control that light. That means I can now paint that French light even here in the Netherlands. 

Painting landscapes still feels like a quest. I regularly go to France for extended periods to work there. Every time I wonder whether it will work out, and every time I discover something new. That keeps it exciting. Ultimately, my work isn’t about grand theories or statements. It’s mainly about looking, drawing and painting, and doing that over and over again. Every now and then, this results in a drawing or painting where everything comes together for a moment and yet you still find something new.”