Say Yes When You Want To Say No #1

Acrylic & oil on linen
115 x 115 cm
2016

Say Yes When You Want To Say No is an artwork that includes a series of paintings and short videos. The paintings are a result of the interaction between my obsessive perfectionism and searching for ways to oppose it. I used several experiments in the painting process to free myself from that obsessiveness in such a way that it broadened my perspective and to achieve that piece of mind. Each painting is build onto moments of these definitive decisions and doubts. Say Yes When You Want To Say No is one large artwork, in which every painting has its own story and is told through a couple of short videos.

For this series I worked from my own archive of experiments, colours and patterns. The four colour combination evolved out of several tests for previous paintings and the (work) pattern is from ‘If You Can’t Be Good, Be Weird #3’. It’s a squared pattern with one larger square in the middle. Some experiments include; breaking the rules that I had set in advance by not finishing a pattern, changing the colour combination in the middle of the process and adding a coincidence by using tape.

With Say Yes When You Want To Say No #1 the experiment began in changing the colours while painting, while at the same time I was creating #2 were the colour combination was fixed and the pattern was changing. In each of these paintings I deliberately used tape in the first layer, because of the risk that paint would slide underneath. So when the first layer was finished, I started rebuilding the grid without tape by adding the same or new colours and varying it to different locations on the canvas.

With painting #5 and #6 I didn’t finish the pattern at all and with the larger paper paintings I only used two colours, its mixtures and vertically shifted the pattern. All these ‘in between’ experiments forced me to keep working on the painting. It kept the interaction between order and chaos going until I found that piece of mind, which I couldn’t foresee at the beginning.

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Say Yes When You Want To Say No #2
Acrylic & oil on linen
80 x 100 cm
2016

Say Yes When You Want To Say No #3
Acrylic & oil on 300 g. Arches Huile Paper
30 x 31.5 cm
2016

Say Yes When You Want To Say No #4
Acrylic & oil on 300 g. Arches Huile Paper
51.5 x 60 cm
2016

Say Yes When You Want To Say No #5
Acrylic & oil on linen
110 x 70 cm
2016

Say Yes When You Want To Say No #6
Acrylic & oil on linen
110 x 70 cm
2016

Say Yes When You Want To Say No #7
Acrylic & oil on 300 g. Arches Huile Paper
30 x 31.5 cm
2016

Say Yes When You Want To Say No #8
Acrylic & oil on 300 g. Arches Huile Paper
51.5 x 60 cm
2016

Say Yes When You Want To Say No #9
Acrylic & oil on 300 g. Arches Huile Paper
51.5 x 60 cm
2016

Say Yes When You Want To Say No #10
Acrylic & oil on 300 g. Arches Huile Paper
51.5 x 60 cm
2016