About Us

I have decided to start teaching painting, because I have always felt that I myself wasn’t being properly taught.

Western European figurative painting has been a language developed by generations of capable men. The beginning of the 20th century proved detrimental to the continuity in passing on that tradition. The information about the craft became scattered and fragmented and it took me years to put the fragments back together into a coherent system.

I wasn’t planning on taking up teaching (because ‘Those who cannot do, teach’ ), but I needed the money. I soon discovered that my own daily painting practice fuelled my teaching and that teaching, in turn, made my painting better, because of the need to conceptualize the insights  borne out by daily work. I changed my mantra from ‘Those who cannot do, teach’ into ‘If you want to master something, teach it’ (which I have found printed on the leaflet attached to a Yogi Tea teabag).

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curriculum vitae