AERONAUT

Fine art

My work in fine art was mainly divided in four sections: Ashes to Ashes, Relics, portraits and other.
Most of these works were made in the nineties. When I started with music again, this work got into the background. My days are way too short...
The themes I am using in my music also appeared in my earlier painting works.
The paintings were done on various undergrounds. Some of them were done on a steel plate and then painted with car lacquer and finished with a high gloss varnish.
Others were done on Canson cardboard and for the Relics paintings I used heavy Schoellershammer paper.

A part of my work got sold or given away while I had no good photograph of it. I am delving into the archives and when I find new material it will be added here...

Ashes to Ashes
This is a series of paintings that explores the various sides of death.
It must have inspired me later when working on the "Songs of Love and Loss" music project.

For example "Agnus Dei" is in a way the painted version of "All My Dreams". The sentence "Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi" (Lamb of God, who forgives the sins of the world), is written in a graffiy style over and over on the background. It depicts human atrocities repeating themselves over and over, while on the opposing sides the women are weeping.

For "Ashes to Ashes • Every Day We Live, A Day We Die" I got inspired by the John Dowland song "Come Cheerful Day" on Emma Kirkby's CD "Time Stands Still".
I wrote the poem by Thomas Campion (1613) in calligraphy with pen and ink, and used it in the background of the painting.

Relics
For my Relics pieces I was inspired by the russian Ikons. My aim was to create visuals that look like artifacts from a lost ancient alien civilization.
All the main images in the paintings look like some iconic form of flying machine, referring to my company name "aeronaut".
The Relics paintings were done in a very different technique than my other work.
First I created a marbled underground. This is done by dripping very thinned oil paint on a water surface. Then you can "draw" and create patterns in the paint that is floating on the water. Carefully a piece of paper is applied to the water, and when you remove it again the paint is on the paper.
On this underground I painted symbols and icons with the airbrush.
Also I have experimented with different kinds of irridiscent paints to create a subtle special effect when the paintings a catch light in a certain way. Of course this effect is not visible on the pictures below.

Portraits
In my portraits I went for photorealism but with a soft touch. I tried to avoid using paintbrushes and most of them are entirely done with the airbrush alone.
This gave them a real photographic style. People, even with their noses close to the paintings were still asking me if these were photographs or paintings...
Unfortunately on these small website pictures it is difficult to show you the real charm of these paintings.

Other
In this section are a few paintings of subjects that inspired me or things I wanted to experiment with...

There are 3 minature postcard size paintings in it (Origins). I made a lot of these and send all the originals to my friends as a new year's card. I can't remember what year that was, it must have been in the early 90's. These three are the only ones that I have left.

"Snowtime" was made for an art contest around the theme "the cat in wintertime".
Unfortunately I did not win, but my painting got shown and mentioned on belgian national TV.

I also included two of the older paintings, both have their flaws and imperfections but I still wanted to share them with you for another reason:
"Aeronaut" is the first image in which I tried to bring my company name to life.
"The serpent and the maiden" is the only painting I ever did of my lovely wife Karin.

Some of these paintings are for sale. If you are interested in buying one of these works, please send us an inquiry for prices and availability via the contact form.