English Jan Baas, schilder

(links to the gallery can be found at the bottom of the text)

Jan Baas (1960) followed his education at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam at the Painting / Graphic Arts department of 1978-1983.

Since 1983 he has been a member of the Graphic Collective Thoets in Amsterdam, a collective of artists with a printing workshop.
In 1987 he received the Titia Buning-Brongers prize.

His work is found in many corporate collections (including READE Amsterdam, VSB fund, VSB bank, Fortis, Procter & Gamble, Novartis Seeds, European Cultural Foundation), various art loan collections and in many private collections, including H.R.H. Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands.

Jan Baas teaches painting at MK24, Amsterdam.

About his work:

Everything starts with scribbles and sketches from compositions. A sketch eventually translates into a painting if the composition remains exciting.
That is when your gaze continues to scan the monumental shapes that can apparently be analyzed at a glance.

Baas looks for the subtle movement between areas of color that he brings to the stage and that he refines – while painting. "It comes about while working and intuitively," the artist explains his layered creations, which can be described as landscapes of the soul. No 'landscape' can be directly traced back to an existing landscape. Each painting continues to move through the layered background and continues to tell a story – despite a simple visual language of sometimes only three colour planes. Everything that feeds the artist to create his atmospheric images can in principle originate within the four walls of his studio. Influences from outside seep through, but never too directly.

Such as a trip he once made to India. Baas noticed that it put an end to his cool Dutch blues and greens. Warm reds and bright yellows were suddenly allowed in and they have since shimmered in many a composition. A trip to Ghana and later also Mali would subsequently help determine the atmosphere and colour intensity of his palette. A period of work in Corme (Northern Spain) brought the radiant light of the Atlantic Ocean and the rugged coast as a new element.

In recent years, in addition to his oil paintings and graphics, Baas has also focused more on watercolour, based on the work themes from Mali (Les Portes de Djenné), Galicia, Spain (La Costa da Morte) and Norway. A new sense of spaciousness and strong lighting are important starting points here.