Meet the Artist: Remco Zuiderwijk
Way back in 1986 I decided to become an artist, don’t ask me why, it’s long ago.
One thing I do remember however, is visiting an exhibition in Thames, of New Zealand artist Tosswill Woollaston. I was living in the Coromandel and surrounded by the stunning landscape, vivid colours and mind-blowing ultra-space. His work hit a sensitive nerve in my way of being at that point in time, and still does. He captured the New Zealand land scape from within his artistic freedom. This is going to be my future, I thought, ART, I want to live within this dimension, I wanted a piece of that feeling of freedom, it was my starting point. So, the journey of discovery started, the journey of learning the craft of painting, the journey of outro-observation and intro-observation, creative mayhem and lots of baked beans on toast accompanied by cheap instant coffee.
From 1988 and 1994 I found myself in my county of birth, the Netherlands. I had a great studio overlooking the serene river Rhine. The great combination of colours, cultural vibrations, all the larger-than-life painters on display, language and culinary tastes of the intertwining countries armed me with a painting style totally unanticipated by me. I must add this realization only came to me a bit further down the line, like so many things in life always seem to do.
What have I become,
what am I doing,
where am I going,
who the heck am I?
Love can catch you totally unexpected, it sure did with me, and I chased her right back to good old New Zealand. Three beautiful children later, a family life, a mortgage, normal daytime job working in the kiwi fruit, this had a head on clash with my life as a free-floating world colour saturated free spirit. Boy did I hit the ground fast. All good however, everyone knows a floater can disappear into thin air, saved by the ying and yang of the universe, I guess.
Decade and a half later second unexpected hit, middle age crises. What have I become, what am I doing, where am I going, who the heck am I? Umm, was I not an artist at one time. To cut a long story short, time to reboot, take off my earthly laden work boots and start floating again. Easier said than done; with the looming possibility of leaving the safety of a weekly paycheck. Even harder than that was the ‘were do I start, what subject what style and what subject’? I found myself being like a blank, black nothingness, a shadow man, and a depressed one at that. The artwork I made before didn’t seem to have the inspiration behind it as it used to do. The world had changed while I was not looking. Gone was my inspiration and drive to be known, successful, famous, the best. In its place I found myself painting, creating to survive, to stay alive, to safe myself and trying to find out again who I am. Out of this rather dark period, my black nothingness little shadow man was born a reflection off myself and perhaps reflecting the current world, perhaps of you yourself and or everyone else, hence the name ‘Benikje’ which is a name put together of tree Dutch words; ‘Am I you’.
Before you say, that is so dark and so depressing, that’s not me and so forth. You can take heart, Benikje has slowly transformed and continues to transform into a kaleidoscope of color, humor, sadness, beauty, the good, the evil, the sexes, the future, the past, all things in the universe and everything in between. But most off all I strive to create from the Heart, heart art, and I hope thereby to give a little heart to everyone who may gaze upon my creations.
Love and light.
Remco.