About the art and me The style: The style grew out of a combination of the cartoons of my youth, surrealism, street art, and symbolism. The motivation: I get strong feelings or ideas about things and search for a way to express these by imagining a sculpture that resembles the quest to understand those feelings and thoughts, questions will be raised and awareness will grow I hope. The personal journey of each piece is what I want to share with the world and I hope you will be moved in one way or another. The process: I love working with metal, you can shape it, bend it, weld it together, and just do so much with it. I love being able to balance things on thin parts and putting together separately sculpted pieces into one whole. Most ideas start with sketching, then I decide on a size for the sculpture based on the scrap metal I have at the time. The next phase is a sketch in steel where I take random scrap to ensemble the piece. To get the proportions and dynamics right I adjust until satisfied. Next up is refining the shapes, then sometimes I need to cut things apart to reach everything with my grinders. Lots of hours later when the refined pieces are all good it's ensembling time. After this comes a final round for details then it's time for the finishing with heat coloring patinas and clear coating. a bit of personal history: I grew up in the suburbs of The Netherlands, with my dad teaching me a bit of art music, and science. Care for the environment was an important thing growing up, and morals like the worth of materials were pounded deeply into me. My parents divorced in my teens and I rebelled a lot. I felt a lot of pressure to perform well which I met with a "fuck that" attitude, having a feeling that why should I care for myself in a responsible healthy way when humans treat our planet and each other so badly, I started experimenting with drugs, weed, in particular caught me as it dissolved the inner pressure to perform, I could relax and feel I was "enough". And so an addiction began and most other developments in my life got to a standstill as there was no pressure anymore from within. 10 years passed, and my life went spiraling down, I tried rehabs (where I first got introduced to sculpting) but failed, and eventually, an ultimatum from a friend got me to a place in France where I could start something new. During the same period, I learned to weld, got a degree, and started sculpting with the leftover scrap from the metal shop. I suddenly had a chance for a new life with warm people and beautiful nature in France and sculpting in the Netherlands, I went back and forth between France and the Netherlands for a while. With social-warm security and peace on the French side and sculpting but temptations and loneliness on the Dutch side, not a hard choice but old things can be hard to let go especially when addiction is a part of the equation. Also, I fell in love, and that made the scale tip towards France eventually. I settled in and started sculpting in France, I made 2 masterpieces of kids and try to put as much time as possible into sculpting as I can as a father.