About fifteen years ago, I visited the Musée Matisse in Le Cateau-Cambrésis in the North of France. Here I was struck by a documentary on Matisse in which he sketched the face of his favourite model with great speed and in a single line. I am fascinated by the swiftness and casualness of Matisse’s lines. In 2009 I started creating a series of works for which fluent lines are the point of departure. In a series of paintings called Faces, I explore the way in which simplicity and power of expression transform decoration and ornamentation into subject matter that is subsequently transcended. By producing the Faces paintings, that are often inspired by faces in the works of Matisse and other modernists, I attempt to familiarize myself with decoration as a visual language. I fully agree with the following quotation by Matisse: “In a work of art decoration is a thing of exceptional value. It is an essential quality. To say that the paintings of an artist are decorative is not negative.” Faces consists of a series of diptychs with two rectangular canvasses, a formal choice that, long ago, I discussed with the painter Mon Wolters. I had witnessed his experiments with this set-up and, in a manner of speaking, continued from there. In comparison with a single canvas, a diptych is more intangible; the complete image produces a sense of visual friction that I enjoy being confronted with. Simultaneously, I started painting Landscapes, a series of canvasses in which abstract compositions and linear elements together research the relationship between pictorial textures and the textures of “objects trouvés”. For instance, fragments of fabrics and leaves (Leaves-series) are applied to form reliefs that are incorporated in their entirety in the various colour harmonies of the paintings. The search for the dialogue between lines and moods in colour landscapes constantly challenges me. Faces, Landscapes en Leaves