House, Garden and Kitchen Paintings is the first solo exhibition featuring work by Groningen-based painter Thijs Jansen at the Rutger Brandt Gallery. The title is as comprehensible as it is confusing. The separate elements—house, garden, kitchen and paintings—are understandable, but together lead you astray. Which raises the question of what exactly a typical painting is.
Jansen skilfully explores this area of tension. We see nothing unfamiliar. Jansen creates hyperrealistic representations of prosaic, everyday objects like a shopping cart, bath mat, bottle of detergent and old TV quiz show. But Jansen always includes elements that point to a world beyond the depicted object. In Departure, the shopping cart is parked by a window with a view of a tropical beach and the Dreft bottle in Draft has a label showing a wild mountain stream. If not the images themselves, the titles provide a subversive commentary. It’s the combination of hyperrealism, surrealism and language that gives Jansen's household paintings a pleasantly disorienting effect.
Where is your studio and how would you describe it?
Lately, I’ve mainly been working a lot in my home studio in Hoogezand. In a room adjacent to the living room, I have an easel and a large table on wheels with a palette and paint. I also have a studio in Groningen with a similar arrangement.
You’re a painter. Your peers usually swear by natural light, preferably from the north. How about you? What makes a good studio for you?
Northern light is fantastic—and I know this because my studios mostly lack it. Around noon, the sun can blast in intensely. I then close the blackout curtains and work with a dimmable LED panel. But the advantage is that I have the same light in the evening! The sun can't quite match that.
For many artists, their studio is a personal space, a sanctuary where they prefer not to be disturbed. But some people find energy in having activity around them. How about you?
My studio is first and foremost practical. The drive to paint is intrinsic and I could do it in any space with good light. Give me a large space and I’ll quickly fill it with things I don’t really need. My home studio, for instance, has a display case with vintage Lego—for inspiration, of course. I look out over an industrial area where people work on cars all day. I like seeing that kind of thing. In Groningen, I share a building with other artists, which makes me enjoy going there. I’m quite a social guy, so in that sense, I chose the wrong profession.
Congratulations on <house, garden="" and="" kitchen="" paintings<="" i="">! The title is somewhat misleading, as the scenes aren’t all that ordinary. How do you come up with your compositions? I understand that you often start from vague memories. How do you translate these?
My work often begins with a vague concept or feeling I associate with a particular space or atmosphere. I then do sketches on paper and on the computer to see if this results a powerful image. If the image intrigues me, the desire to paint it usually follows naturally.
Much of your work has a humorous title, like Draft, a blend of Dreft and raft, where we see a Dreft bottle with an image of a wild stream on the label. Which comes first, the title or the painting?
The order is random. One can lead to the other. Sometimes there’s a title first, but usually it develops while painting. The idea of that bottle of cleaning product was inspired by my student days. I once felt so hungover that everything made me nauseous until I started doing the dishes. The strong pine scent of the detergent was miraculous at that moment. I probably could’ve just gone out for fresh air, but then we wouldn’t have this painting. A good title supports the image. I wanted to capture the combination of an artificial indoor space and the overwhelming power of nature. Your eye is led from the waterfall on the label to the lines on the floor to the unusual cutouts of the painted floor to the oval cutout on the bottle and finally back to the waterfall. To me, Draft is the only possible title.
I read that as a child, you wanted to be a cartoonist. So, I’m wondering if this interplay between language and image a remnant of that dream?
I couldn’t have put it better myself. I mostly enjoyed drawing and coming up with jokes and titles for stories. I love puns and double entendres. I often drew characters whose appearance or posture tell a story in themselves. My ambition was longer stories, but I often got stuck in the process. Now I’ve made it my specialty to tell a lot in a single image—often without showing human figures.
You paint dreamlike scenes but in a photorealistic style. That seems challenging. What was the most difficult work to paint and why?
The hardest part is to translate the original vague idea or personal feeling into a universal image that is interesting to both the creator and viewer. I increasingly use a 3D drawing program to see what works. I then use the result as the basis for the painting. I often already know how I want or can paint something. That’s when the craftsman in me comes out and I lose myself in the actual work. The downside is that I don’t make things easy for myself. Halfway through the process, I sometimes wonder what I’ve gotten myself into. But when I later see it hanging in a gallery or museum, I’m very proud and pleased with all my choices.
What’s the answer to Art, 17 letters and why?
The only correct answer is that after a while, you wonder what the correct answer is. People have been puzzling over what art is for centuries and I’m certainly not going to answer that in an interview!
What are you working on right now?
I’ve started a new series of paintings and I have ideas I’d rather not reveal yet because they often end up somewhere else entirely. I don’t want to be reminded of paintings I didn’t actually create. Usually, I start very much out-of-the-box and after a while, return to where I left off with fresh eyes.