Elmar Ipskamp, AKI Enschede

14 juni 2016

The paintings that I have made are like friends, both the paintings themselves and the people in them. It is not therapy but I find it therapeutic. Working on them feels enjoyable and I could not live without them. In this way painting is like continuously looking in the mirror. It can be very tiring but it is also addictive and this urges me to continue painting.

At the moment I paint lonely and solitary figures who are each connected to me in their own ways; they stand unaccompanied in their worlds. These worlds range from being outdoors, consisting only of surfaces, or can even be a simple household or living room. In general the figures are discouraged or bored, they wonder how they ended up where they are and what the point of living is at all. I intentionally do not paint people I know, nor do I paint myself. This is because painting myself would cause me to be too close to my work. They wouldn’t be my friends anymore it would be just me.

Occasionally I use movie images, mirror them, edit them in Photoshop, project them, and only reproduce a few parts. I continue the painting without the reference, only glancing once in a while. This allows me to paint in my own style without being confined to the reference. I want to make decisions in which separate my painting from the edited version.
That, along with the urge to paint what I want is what makes the images autonomous and makes the impersonal personal.

Each finished work has an atmosphere that is different yet still conveys similar feelings. It is impossible for the observer to feel the same about my paintings as I do yet it is possible for them to experience similar feelings.