I am always looking for new perspectives. A few years ago an artist friend asked me if I wanted to take painting lessons with him. A bit taken aback but nevertheless challenged, partly because he mainly teaches amateurs, I took his proposal seriously. I had to come up with the subject myself, he couldn't help me with that.
A week later I entered his studio with a series of slides of my father. I saw it as a challenge and a continuation of my photographic work to now copy these in oilpaint. With this new technique I was able to learn to completely shape the existing image. Repainting is not only about looking closely but also adding depth to images that were originally made by light in a different time.

My father observed family life as an outsider and took pictures like so many fathers did in those days. Fathers worked and took vacation photos.
With a blue marker my father wrote on the first slide of the series, the year 1961, right through the bottom of the image, in the floor of the deck of the ferry from Kruinige to Breskens. There the holiday started with the car on the ferry to sail off to the end of the world, to those wonderful weeks of playing and being bored.

I play with the faded colors of the slides from my youth and paint tangible memories on the white canvas