Biography Jan Peter van Opheusden
When they write about art, Sunday critics have a few well honed techniques they just grabbed from somewhere to discuss whatever artist they don’t like, or otherwise don’t understand.
They can talk about what he has accomplished and attribute qualities to him that he does not have.
They may focus on a detail in his life that they often misunderline as being important.
They can also baulk at his artistic training -and hence his “masterful technique”- unless they decide to glorify his self-taught background and hence his “authenticity” and “spontaneity.”
From rascal to globetrotter
Jan Peter van Opheusden was born March 12, 1941, in Eindhoven, where he still lives and works. As a child, he terrified his little niece by turning his finger into a work of art with a large nail “through it” and with a bandage dripping with blood around it.
He will study at the, now internationally renowned, Academy of Industrial Design in Eindhoven (now Design Academy).
In addition to painting, Jan Peter taught visual arts and handicrafts for many years before establishing himself as a free artist. He embraces a wide range of disciplines including painting, sculpture and various graphic techniques. Constantly, he undertakes study tours to countries within Europe, as well as beyond. After his mega exhibition in 1998 under the roof of the Grande Arche in Paris, Jan Peter’s work is gaining appreciation, even in larger circles. Meanwhile, his work can be found worldwide in large collections of mostly private collectors.
“Painting is my passion and my work should radiate warmth, nothing else.
Jan Peter sculpts, silk screens and paints. Jan Peter paints quickly, not only with the brush but also with his hands. He considers the canvas his palette and prefers to work with acrylic, nice and quick. Spirited as life. Mixed techniques, using chalk as a base for the right effect. On canvas, panel or paper; people, nature, everyday things, movement, dancers, theater or sports and sometimes, as an extended finger exercise, a child portrait. “I want to convey feelings.
I don’t paint pretty things, and experience shows that people buy my work because it radiates warmth. I therefore experience painting as my passion”.
‘Surround yourself with beautiful things’ (Confucius, 500 B.C.).
“It should be nice to look at my work. Confucius already said in about 500 B.C. that you should surround yourself with beautiful things, and I completely agree. To work well, when painting itself, I must first of all feel comfortable. If others also enjoy my work, that is wonderful. The viewer may, as far as I am concerned, complete the work with his or her own imagination. His or her imagination often sees something completely different from mine and that adds another dimension to my work.”
‘I AM that color’
“The color is actually even more decisive for me than the form. I AM that color. For that reason, I almost never use pastel shades but mostly primary and contrasting colors. They express direct emotions and feelings charged with impetuous expression or tense eroticism and love for people; they are not messages. When you look closely at my paintings you exclusively see something of yourself”.
‘Through perspiration comes inspiration’
“Painting this way, is also always an exhausting battle between matter and fantasy. Yes, through perspiration comes inspiration. Not contrived but immediately explosive with at most a theme in mind and with music as a backdrop. Every day again because it always has to be better and different”. And when that flow occasionally stalls, Jan Peter, ogling Greek and Roman sculpture, forms wax with his hands to have a bronze sculpture cast from it, but painting always remains his great passion.
