World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 125 - Rineke Kop
In Rineke Kop's studio there are large canvases in different colors. It is abstract work. By painting layer over layer, watery, there is the illusion of clouds or sea. You see paint drippings taking a halt, making a turn.
I speak Rineke Kop in the big frontroom of her studio. Her partner – artist - Clemens Zalm is also at the table. His dibonds of flat tree stumps hang left on the wall. With a lot of sea. Which in a certain way is in the works of Rineke Kop as well. In the video (see below), she says that she has a connection with the sea. "The sea, that's the end of the world. It is the separation of water and earth. And above the sky. That always intriguing. The North Sea binds me forever to The Hague."
Letting go
That idea wasn’t always there. She had the plan to go to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague for a year, and then to the Amsterdam Academy of Fine Arts. But soon it became clear that form and color was her way of expression and she finished her education at the Royal Academy.
"We had a lot of anatomy. Models, day in, day out. You learned to look good and draw well. When I finished the study I thought, ‘What should I do now?’. The models and still lifes weren’t interesting for me anymore. Drawing and painting to reality was too easy, I knew beforehand how it would be. I wanted to go deeper to the core of painting. It cost me ten years to let go of what I learned. To go back to the intent of the color."
It was a challenge for her to go to abstraction. "Exciting! Delightful to let go of the figuration. I searched and let myself be surprised, again and again. ‘Where will I end?’ I thought. I experimented with the dynamics of the brush stroke, the material and the carriers. The most important thing was color experience. You will enter in that if you allow it yourself and dare to experiment."
Intuitive color use
“I lived in Portugal for a good six months and worked from spring to late summer. There I discovered that I was especially busy with color. In spring, everything is very green and very colorful. In the summer it becomes blood clot. The landscape is drying up and the colors become warm oker and burned sienna. When I returned to my studio in September, I put my drawings on the tabel. I saw the whole cycle there: spring, the transition to summer, abstract painted in color motifs. I was not aware of that."
"That was a big step, that I went into color and made the choice for color. Then I got a period when the material became very important. It was about paint, types of paint, layer of paint. I started with bright colors, but working layer over layer I came in quieter emotions and the canvases became calmer. But under the white were those fierce colors."
At the moment, ‘the conversation with the paint’ is very important. "I work with acrylic and oil paint. The two 'work' with each other. The surface is important. Canvas works differently from paper. For the past six months I have worked on aluminum plates. I feel less able to play with that. The shiny surface works so that the application of acrylic paint has to be done very consciously. It needs to be looked after and felt. It's a fascinating development, and here too the end result has surprised me a lot."
Research, collaborate and experience
While working, she tends to disappear completely in it. One way to get out was to teach or actually pass the passion. "At a certain point, you unlearned to say good morning by being alone with work in the studio for years. The fun of teaching is that I can tell about color and that I can inspire people. In my lessons, the process is more important than the end result. With a group of female artists, I have set up the ‘Kopgroep’. I think it is important to know people of equal interest. I was co-founder of the Pow Wow in the HKK, The Hague Art Circle (de Haagse Kunstkring). Every month artists gathered to discuss art. I also did projects with Clemens Zalm, my partner. In Spijkenisse, Turkey, Bulgaria. It was about the process and the experience of the work we made on the spot. In Bulgaria I had a stay on the Danube. My concept was to paint the Danube every day. Sometimes there was a hail in the evening, and dazzling sunlight during the daytime. The light of the Danube was full of emotions."
She sold her work in small circles at home and abroad and she won various awards, including the Aarschot International Award for Painting in Belgium.
Experiments in color use
We walk to her paintings. She is still working on some. She put the paint on (yellow / black) and then moves with a large brush from left to right. The paint runs out all sides. "I let the movement go and I look and feel and experience." The result is sometimes scenic, with three-quarters of air and a quarter of earth. Around the corner, in the big room there is a series of small paintings underneath and next to each other, in different colors. "These are small experiments in color use. Layer over layer. Meetings of color on color."
"When working on aluminum, the layering does not work as it used to be on canvas. The aluminum is present because it glides. This creates a different layeredness, the exterior reflection that effects the surface, a special discovery."
Finally, asked for her philosophy, she says: "Art is about intuition, feeling and experience. I especially think experience is important. Experience of yourself as an artist. That you're in, day in, day out. Dive in the color again and again. It's a fascinating, exciting and moving journey, the result surprises me every time."
