Johannes George (Jan) Wessendorp (Soerabaja 1940) attended the MTS for photography and photographic technology in The Hague and at the Royal Academy of Visual Arts in The Hague in the techniques painting, drawing and spatial design. He was a pupil of Paul Citroen, Rein Draijer, and Hugo Liebe. Wessendorp works as a draughtsman, painter and sculptor.
ARTIST STATEMENT
“Art is hidden in nature,
whoever can draw it out into the open gets hold of it.“
Albrecht Dürer
These words by Dürer are a guide in my work and life.
Not only does it apply to nature, that becomes perceptible as an object world around us, but also, in so far as we are nature ourselves, to our physical and intelligent existence.
Inside us nature makes itself known as the proper, particular disposition and specific talent.
This quality determines the kind of attention we have for that object world, by means of which a world of ideas and feelings opens up.
The struggle of the artist is to come to a distinct form of experience that in its turn expresses itself in a specific artistic ability.
The course of development of vision, originality and ability to express is determined by an ongoing self-education and training, in all aspects of the artists life.
In that, all lower impulses become subservient to the higher ones and are absorbed by them!
“Art is hidden in nature.”
The painted or drawn image is not so much carried by external characteristics, as by internal implications, that are a consequence of that growing awareness.
The possibility to affect and communicate in art: to set the spectator in motion internally and thereby to incite him or her to self-experience, lies not in the driven desire of the producer to announce himself, in the will to affect others or in the lust of the designing.
That possibility lies in the artists ability to create from the source of life that he has been able to tap from and to which he has been able to give an authentic visual form!
“whoever can draw it out into the open gets hold of it!”
Jan Wessendorp (translation: Hermien van der Heide)
‘ I can’t do anything else, I have that rotty talent ‘
(Interview of Annelies Vlaanderen published in BN/DeStem of 27 August 2013- translated with google translate)
To start with an easy question, Mr. Wessendorp: Why do you paint?
“Haha, that’s just the hardest question to answer. I can’t do anything but paint. I have been a dent for nothing else from an early age. I came from a jappen camp, along with my mother, as a traumatized kid. We went to live in Sassenheim, I went to the Art academy in The Hague to study visual arts and later photography. I was the mirabeby from the polder. But I could draw! That was a way out for me. All drawing I could make a world that was good. Around it, everything failed. ”
Has it still come well with you?
“Eh… Reasonable. I’m not someone who is moving easily. I prefer to be in my studio, alone. Work has loneliness. It’s not just about the moment of painting, no, you should always be alert. You know, actually painting is a kind of top sport. An athlete can also not live on the whole time. You must be continuously set to a certain wavelength. When I walk through the supermarket, for example, and candies in certain colors, I think immediately: Hey, I’m looking for that color for so long. ”
What do you really want to convey with your paintings? They are not exactly cheerful images.
“I see myself as a modern icon painter. I try to get something out of reality and make it a symbol of it, to give it higher values. ”
You will therefore assume that there are higher values.
Indeed. This is not all. ”
Do you refer to something divine? According to me, if I see your work, you are sensitive to it.
“In that sense I think we’re all looking for happiness, just not the same way. The criminal seeks the same as the monchier. What drives them is happiness. ” All the restless Dolen in good and evil, on this globe, is a direceless search for eternal beauty. ”
Do you ever come across happiness?
“In My work: Sometimes, one moment of happiness. I would prefer this to be satisfactory about successful work. In General: Whether it’s a painting or a friendship, you’ll never achieve what you want, of course. It always remains a weak reflection of what you pursue. But that’s why you go further. I have gone through dark valleys in my life, not just in my childhood. For example, failed relationships behind the back. The crazy thing is that I learned more about it. You learn to know your boundaries, you experience life even brighter than before. ”
Sometimes you don’t want to throw the helm. Do you want to leave a lot of difficult things with that paint behind you and, for example, start a vineyard in France?
“I wish I were happy with nothing that way, but I have that rotty talent. That drives me and is both a luck and a load. ”
“Great national fame has not been acquired until now. Are you, you find, sufficiently appreciated?
“By colleagues and art lovers though. By the official art-circuit less. Well, I think I should have settled in a city like Amsterdam or Berlin after the art school, then I might have become more famous. I did not do that. I have chosen to work part-time, first as a creative therapist and later as a teacher drawing and painting at the St. Joost in Breda. ”
Yet I do not quite understand why you have not broken through. I see so much power and craft in that work which is lacking in many other artists
“Well, I still do have a statement. My work does not connect in any way to any current. So that comes again, the value of your work becomes more difficult to recognize ”
That is, in fact, an advantage?
“I never experienced it. Even people who are well-versed in the visual arts do not know what to do with them. ”
Do you have fans? Do you ever sell what?
“Yes, there are people who appreciate my work. And I do sell some, but that’s also getting less. At one point, all the walls are full of fans. ”
Pity is misplaced. You wílt it so, that fight with the canvas and that solitude.
“You need solitude. Solitude can be delicious. Everyone is in fact lonely. There is no need to stick a load of grief or failure at all. I think it is our task to accept loneliness as a force, to dare to be lonely. ”
Surely you are not always alone? And you sometimes laugh?
“Oh yeah. In Company I function precisely as someone who can get people out of the seriousness. With Auke van der Heide, a good friend and colleague with whom I have done many monumental assignments, I can laugh very much. ”
Nevertheless. Is Bergen op Zoom not something too burgundian for you?
“The crazy thing is that I’m going to love this city. Since I live there I have helped to get artists ‘ initiatives off the ground-first impulse, in the 1970s; After Arsis, ten years ago. With impulse we have once taken out a region-God, what have we laughed at. Jan van Mosselveld was then curator of the Markiezenhof. He didn’t want to pay any hanging money for paintings, while that was a nationwide rule. Then we took him hostage and at some point he was caved. ”
Still back to what you told in the beginning. In my opinion, the trauma of the Jappen camp is always to haunt you.
“That could be. I was still not 2 years old when I entered the camp. I did not have any words before. It is always like a vague blanket over me. ”
You continue to paint in any case.
“Oh yeah. There is even a turmoil. I’m already 72, I see the hourglass in front of me and I still want to reach the ideal. “