Visual artist Hans Hoekstra (Groningen, 1983) works in a spacious, bright studio in the Harense Biotoop. In addition to his education at the Minerva Academy, Hoekstra also attended the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and De Ateliers in Amsterdam. In recent years he had solo exhibitions in the Milk Room in Heerenveen and the Drents Museum in Assen. Hoekstra is currently working on a series of large self-portraits: "I like that it becomes so enormously physical when a work is so large."
"I started drawing and painting very early, when I was about six years old. I had my first painting course when I was eleven. From the age of seventeen I also bought paint for the first time. This has been eighteen years ago - that is about half my life I went to the Academy when I was 20. At that time I often painted in handy formats, but when I started studying at the Ateliers I was very challenged to work bigger. Then I discovered it suddenly: with large work, the making is also very different, because you do not paint from the wrist, but precisely from the arm. That physical labor is also something you see in large-sized work. I think it's great that a leg really weight, that it becomes very monumental.The human figures in my work become huge giants, but I don't want to turn them into gods.
Earlier I portrayed many couples and the intimacy between people. During last summer I started drawing self-portraits purely out of finger exercises, just to practice again and look at myself. I noticed that I found it very exciting not to paint others, but myself in the world, wrestling with figures and painting. You are in your studio and you are constantly wondering what the next step is. At Sign, as part of FILLER III, I made a wall painting of twelve by three meters about this indecision and doubt that you encounter as an artist. In these self-portraits I partly feel a kind of relaxation and tranquility, but at the same time I also find an awkward woodenness in them to sit. I always look for certain poses where you get a kind of entanglement of the body.
Whenever possible, I am in my studio every day. Because I also teach at Minerva Academy, I don't succeed every day. Last week I had a lot of time. Today, for example, I started with a portrait assignment and then let it simmer for a while and move on to another work. For me it feels best to work like that. You work on something, put it away, sand down a cloth or pick up an earlier work. My work gradually develops - in a week I will be able to think about a work completely differently. Ideally I work very organically and then you roll from one work to the next. If things don't go ideal, you sit down, look, think. In fact, it is always something to look back and something to look forward. I find self-portraits a very exciting subject within that; you say something about your position in the world, where do you meet yourself? I find that very exciting."
The space in which an artist works is a place where people plod, plan and measure day in, day out. Where a creative product is created and where people think. In this series, visit Groningen artists at their workplace. What are they currently working on? What does their working day look like? And what do they do to relax?
Please note: this article has been translated using Google Translate