Erik-Jan Vaandering
(°1976, Alkmaar, Netherlands) is an artist who mainly works with painting (oil). In a search for new methods to ‘read the city’, Vaandering investigates the dynamics of landscape, including the manipulation of its effects and the limits of spectacle based on our assumptions of what landscape means to us. Rather than presenting a factual reality, an illusion is fabricated to conjure the realms of our imagination. His paintings are characterised by the use of everyday objects in an atmospheric scenery in which recognition plays a mystery role. By taking daily life as subject matter and everyday aesthetic, he focuses on the idea of ‘public space’ and more specifically on spaces where anyone can do anything at any given moment. His works establish a link between the landscape’s reality and that imagined by its conceiver. His works are often about contact with architecture and basic living elements. Energy (heat, light, water), space and landscape are examined in less obvious ways and sometimes developed in absurd ways.
Education:
Graphic design , social studies, painting
* in 2016 Vaandering was invited by the National academy of painting of the republic of China to work there for an upcoming exhibition of his paintings . He travelled allong the Yangtze river to sketch the daily live and the natural scenery .
A note by art historian and artist B de Wolff :
Erik-Jan Vaandering is a figurative painter. His paintings consist out of many layers, making it an interesting unity of colours in which a poetical image occurs. Cityscapes, harbours and mysterious landscapes seem to be bathing in warm gentle colours. Oilpaint is his medium. He is at ease with it and the play of the artist with the oilcolours is outstanding. His art is based on graphical drawings in which he has been trained thoroughly. I am convinced that he is not only making his best work thus far in this stage of his career, but the best has yet to come ..