After a long summer I came home again and started processing my impressions. I would like to share some moments with you, perhaps more honest  than you are used to on average from an artist, but that openness and honesty is also what I stand for. My work is about that too. As you may have already known, I visited New foundland in Canada last July. Through the Pouch cove foundation I have been invited to work as an artist in residence there. The organization has more than 20 years of experience in this and has started over again in a new building after a few years. This building is an old school in the town of Pouch cove, a small cute town where everyone knows each other and the people are very friendly. The total renovation that the school is undergoing is still in full swing. Eventually the building will be able to accommodate around 7 artists and there is also a 1500 m2 gallery, the James Baird gallery who owns it. His way of working is that he seeks out and invites people, the only thing he asks for in return is a gift from a work. So he has been working for 20 years and all the art that he has collected is also used as a means of payment for all sorts of things. He is a very resourceful man and found his approach very interesting to use art as a means of exchange. This way of working really appeals to me as a person.

It was a colorful international group of artists and all working in totally different art forms. It was very interesting for me not to communicate with realistic artists and the conversations were much more about the content than just technical exchanges. The days started early and they were mostly filled with painting, painting and painting again ... The last period before I went to Canada I noticed a doubt about the content of my paintings .. shouldn't I try to make more accessible work to appeal to a wider audience? I think the eternal doubt of many artists, but for me a real struggle lately. I had an intense conversation with an art dealer there. I sincerely asked for his opinion about the marketability of the works made on the spot since I thought I had made much more accessible work, a woman wearing clothes lying in the sunny grass, a woman in a bath with beautiful colored flowers around her and a little boy in the woods. All of the works were dismissed as difficult to sell: too gloomy, too dark, too naked or too personal ... this greatly disturbed me since I really thought I was doing something else !! Completely upset, I ended up in an impasse. Antonio Pauciulo, one of the other artists there, made me look at the situation in a completely different way and thanks to many good conversations and conversations with myself, the penny finally fell. Art is not about marketability but about exposing your soul, painting from your toes to come to something that will make you soul-happy. Something I have done for the past 20 years but it was forgotten. If there are other people who think they recognize something of a feeling, that's great, but if not, that's ok too.