© Hans van der Leeuw

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At first glance, van der Leeuw's portraits look firmly rooted in the Dutch classical tradition, however it quickly becomes obvious that style is used primarily as response to the subject at hand, like colors on the palette. The emphasis is on psychology and lack of formality. Van der Leeuw's portraits are the result of interaction and interpretation rather than formal representation, he doesn't aim to simply please.

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"For me, the portrait is a theatrical play with eyes, nose, mouth and the light as principal actors. Comedy or drama, equally interesting. I feel that in essence every portrait is a self-portrait too, I don't want to please nor do I aim at merely creating a realistic representation. I like to capture the moment and preferably paint more than one portrait of a subject, nobody is just one person."

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- Van Der Leeuw

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What is your first memory of art?

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My first experience with art was through a subscription to a very influential art magazine when I was a kid back in the 60’s. Reproductions of artworks from Dutch public collections would regularly arrive in the mail and it was my job to add them to a fancy dark blue binder with gold lettering. The oftentimes classical artworks, ranging from Rembrandt to Mondrian, would be explained in writing and in radio talks by experts in the field. My first live art memory was seeing Gilbert and George’s first Living Sculpture performance in 1969 on the stairs of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, thanks to the monthly museum lessons that were part of the curriculum in the better elementary schools back then. And don’t forget it was also in the middle of the Vietnam war and Neil Armstrong took his first small step, confusion ruled…

 

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First off, how would you sum up your work?

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I think I paint people, not portraits. The combination of both classical and conceptual art is still present in my work. In the 80’s I studied at the then still very old fashioned Rijksacademie in Amsterdam, painting and drawing live models for four years, well shielded from much more exciting things that were going on in the real world. After graduation it didn’t take long to shed academism in favor of a more symbolic and conceptual approach to art. I got tired of the art world and through a commissioned piece for a big company I became a freelance marketing and communications expert for a number of years. When I started making art again, I very deliberately chose a direction out of my comfort zone and relatively new to me, representational portraits in oils.

 

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How do you approach a painting? What do you gather first, someone’s aura or do you look at their facial features and expressions?

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A sizable part of my work consists of “Muse interpretations”. At the base of these portraits are often found references (Instagram selfies). Post teenage angst combined with a wonderfully self-conscious awareness of “the good side” of the face are just two of the triggers that might start me off on a portrait.

 

For me, appropriation of a found image is an artistic statement and is not to be mistaken for just using photo reference. What makes selfies interesting is that they are the quintessential self-portraits, made on the subject’s own terms, reflecting how they prefer to be seen by others and how they like themselves best. As an added bonus, most of the digital pics won’t survive long, not nearly as long as my painted interpretations will and that appeals to my love for archiving life.

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