Koen Delaere (1970)
Grooves, surfaces, lines – Koen Delaere seeks to experiment with the colour and structure of paint on canvas. Concepts like growth, overgrowth and change are the undercurrents of his work. Delaere while working maintains an open perspective, but never asks himself whether the painting emerging on the canvas is 'good.' 'Often I get a good idea, a good feeling, only when a canvas is three-quarters finished,' says Delaere. ‘That's when I'm really hard at it, in total concentration, I almost go into a trance and suddenly I'm doing a few things that I just know, this is it, this is good.'* Delaere works fast, but once finished, is critical of his work – of a stack of one hundred paintings, sometimes no more than fifteen make the cut.
The artist describes himself as a fundamental painter. Although his drawings and paintings sometimes have a landscape-like air, his real fascination lies in where distance and detail, colour and structure, form and change, material and image, come together. He prefers to leave room for the viewer to follow what he does on the canvas. 'I want to strip the process down to the bone to then build it up again,' he explains. 'Drawing is no more than ink on a surface, painting is just paint on a canvas. That's what I'm working with.'**
* H. Den Hartog Jager, www.koendelaere.nl, (text for catalogue published for the awarding of the Wolvecampprijs 2007)
** A. Spaninks, ’Spotlight: Koen Delaere’ Tubelight # 48, 01.01.2007
