LETRAS QUE DUELEN

Poen de Wijs

Poen de Wijs (Dutch artist) 1948 - 2014
Brief aan Miekje (Letter to Miekje), 1983
watercolour
30 x 30 cm.
signed Poen de Wijs 1983
private collection

Very few visual artists will have penetrated into so many living rooms as Poen the Wijs from The Hague. In recent years, the general public both in the Netherlands as abroad have become familiar with his photorealistic paintings on the record album covers of the popular music group Flairck.
"Flairck really was a publicity flow for me," Poen says. "For years, you are busy with all kinds of things. I made book covers made for ‘De Arbeiderspers’, assignments for a mortgage bank. From anything and everything. And at some point in time one thing stands out and you go with the flow. "Flairck – the people who have lived and rehearsed here for years - asked: “Can we use a painting of yours for our first album cover? " Of course, great. Well, Flairck suddenly made it, and then you go along with it. Anyway, after that I also did the second cover, and the third, and fourth. I believe I am now busy with the sixth." However it's not the case that Poen is exclusively busy with record sleeves. In recent years he exhibited in Basel and Frankfurt. His permanent gallery Steltman in Amsterdam currently has a waiting list of potential buyers for his watercolours. He works slowly. What is finished is sold immediately. Recently, he and his wife, the artist Marion van Nieuwpoort, as part of a cultural exchange tour with an exhibition of their work, linked to performances by Flairck, made a tour through Indonesia. They have also given some lessons and lectures.
The world of visual arts was discovered rather later by Poen de Wijs. "In the middle of puberty, I was fourteen years old. At school, you draw better than the rest of the class. So it starts. Actually I sat in the middle of the music. During my secondary school HBS, I did music, recorder, but eventually painting appealed more to me. It is more something with your fingers. Music is study, study, study. The creative part that eventually comes in, is quite small. From the first moment you make a line, drawing is a creative event. Then, you are the creator of the whole. That was more important to me, so I sat aside music on my eighteenth. It then became the academy. "
..........He uses a fairly labour-intensive technique. His smooth images are obtained through by water colouring layer over layer, and the ‘washing’ of the paint. In many of his paintings and drawings Marion shows up as a model, but usually Poen works on the basis of photos. Numerous recordings he took first of his models.
"Yet on the other hand it also creates another opportunity. Because in photography you also discover other things. These double images I use are actually based on the photography. Not that I make them a double photographic exposure, but all those facets of movement that actually portray walking ... So that it is not a static caught moment, but build up out of many pictures. I once had a model, which I had walking endlessly. And I took pictures and watched and caught moments of which you think: that is typical”. From the one shot he uses an arm, from the other a leg. He arranges them to an aesthetic whole. His 'collage' arises: however only on the paper. Through the brush. The cutting of the photo’s into pieces only happens in his mind. "Just as long until the idea fits in his head. In this way, whole series of his mainly female nudes emerged. Soft erotic art.

Text: Haagse Courant, Coos Versteeg 28 December 1983