English text

Peter Koelman, born in Amsterdam in the year 1948, is autodidact and in being creative he has been always busy with drawing and painting. Most of the time was spend on drawing cartoons and comics. With painting Peter was always looking for new forms, like creating 3D paintings, using all kinds of materials topped with layers of oil paint. In 1999 painting was getting a more professional character. A personal style was developed which can be described as clear and colorful, with a close affinity to comic-book drawings. Black lines bordering colored areas are essential parts of the paintings.

If one tries to classify Peter’s present style, it will not be easy to find an exact name for this particular style. Fauvism is getting close, being a separation of Impressionism, where colorful monochromatic areas were painted, sometimes with dark shadings, to express figurative scenes.

To be exact, the source of Peter’s style can be traced to the “linge claire” , a style of comic drawings created in the fifties by Herge and co-artists. Essential in their work were the black lines and even colors that were used.

Peter’s paintings certainly are figurative, but in the way of using these colored areas, the paintings are getting an abstract touch. Inspiration comes from fashion and art from the first half of the 20th century, with an accent on the period in history where Jugendstil/Art Nouveau had great impact on artistic life. This artistic style, where decoration and elegance were the main keywords, had a great influence on fashion in the twenties and thirties of the 20th century and in particular on women’s fashion. The same women which are always the main subject of Peter’s paintings. Peter tries to accentuate in his paintings this women’s elegance, which was depicted so fine a century ago.

Peter’s work can be seen regularly at exhibitions inside and outside Flevoland, from Groningen in the north to Antwerp in Belgium and Hannover in Germany.