Eelco Maan
“Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.”
Eelco Maan has been working as a visual artist since 1994. Initially experimenting with figurative, Fauvism and surrealistic elements – influenced by Klee, Miró and the CoBrA movement – he gradually adopted a more austere and abstract style. Any ‘Moon-watcher’ (his Dutch name ‘Moon’ means ‘Moon’) might well be his attraction to the craquelure in early medieval art, to the savage Pollock eruptions and the obstinate colour abstractions by Eugène Brands and Willem de Kooning.
While his works are abstract, we recognize them in very real imagery – sunlight dancing off water or bursting through fog, cloud formations and rich autumnal colours. His work represents the abstract art tradition but with his own merit and a mystical undertone. His oeuvre touches ineffably upon works by preceding masters, but always shows a compelling idiosyncratic character, recognisable for its authenticity.
His work has been displayed in galleries and Art fairs in the Netherlands, UK, France and Belgium since 1995, both as a solo exhibitor and in collaboration with other artists.