The Korrewegwijk is a diverse and colourful neighbourhood and if you walk through its streets it is possible to cast a glance into a hidden art studio. The neighbourhood is full of artists, one of which is the painter and drawing artist Rik Hagt. We spoke to him about his work at his studio.
“I didn’t start painting until pretty late in life. Before I mostly concerned myself with writing and I wanted to get into journalism, or even write a novel, however that never really happened. Painting was rediscovered in the eighties and Groningen, with Frans Haks as the director of the Groninger Museum, was the place to be. At the time I was part of the local squatting scene, where a lot of people were actively painting and that’s how I got into it as well. Painting was completely sensational to me; even seeing what happens when you mix the paint on your palette is amazing. Sometimes the palette is prettier than the painting. When I was twenty-five I enrolled into Academy Minerva and started studying Fine Art. At the time the education took five years and that’s how I graduated in 1992. I got off to a flying start when the Mondriaan Fund granted me a start stipend.
The way I see it there are two types of artists; first there are artists that sort of always paint the same sort of painting and then there are artists that want to perpetually surprise themselves, I belong to the latter. For me, painting is a way to get to know yourself. Je learn a lot about yourself when you make a painting. How you block yourself when you get angry for example. But along the way you learn to recognise those tendencies and learn to channel them instead. That way you can capture more tension within a work and which is something that I hope the audience also experiences when they see my work.
Making a painting takes a lot of time and sometimes I just feel relieved when it’s done.
Domesticity and belonging are the most important themes within my work. Since 1991 I have been developing a series of work in which I paint a hotel room interior every year. A hotel room is special because within a few days you make a foreign environment your own, and when you leave you will always keep a special bond with that place. I also started in this series because I needed an anchor point within my body of work; something to fall back upon and research all over again. Because I only make one of these works a year, the subject is always fresh to me. Making a painting takes a lot of time and sometimes I just feel relieved when it’s done. This is also why I switch a lot between painting and drawing. A drawing I finish within a single drawing session. Compared to writing it is like writing a column or a short story. A painting however, is a long story, a novella, it requires more stamina. Although it must be said that when it comes to a long story, I also keep a drawing blog where I post a drawing every single week and I have been keeping up that habit for quite some years.
Currently I am working on a remake of a series of paintings that I painted in the years 2004 and 2006. The series was called “Man” and the new series is called “Man, small”. The new paintings are smaller in size but I use the original drawings, photographs and other documentation and I make them now with all the experience I have gathered over the years and the person that I am today, fifteen years later. I was never quite satisfied with the old series and now that I am working on it again, it all comes alive again. Everything gets a new meaning and that is something that fascinates me very much. I never plan my work in advance, I work intuitively to what I need at that time. I don’t work from a need to look back at how I felt at that time, but I want to see how I have developed ever since that time. Whatever it is that you do in the present is always the most important thing.”
You can find Rik Hagt's art in our Art Rental Collection and on his portfolio page. Alongside, Hagt has his own website.