The Eriskay Connection

For more than 16 years on his free Mondays, Ron Dirven (NL) studied twigs, roots, trunks, blossoms, leaves, more trunks, and trees. Endless trees. He did not often go out into nature, as you would expect from someone so focussed on it, but used his studio to wander among the trees and try to fathom them. He improvises and searches for his own soul and identity in his paintings, but only through trees. They stand firm and strong and move their leaves flexibly in the wind. Trees and branches emerge, grow, as it were, from the act of painting. In his painting gesture he searches for the power of nature. The metaphorical power of nature is evident in his work: the tree as a metaphor for life.

He painted from root to trunk, to crown and back again, with great passion for experimentation. Hundreds of fleeting paintings – not on canvas but on sheets of paper – almost meditatively depict trunk after trunk after trunk after trunk. Sometimes leaning towards the figurative, but often abstract and expressive. Coarse brushstrokes fly across the paper, unclear where trunk becomes root. Sometimes we even see fruits or leaves. Dirven’s work is honest and dedicated to this one form. Through his work as curator of the Vincent van GoghHuis in Zundert – birthplace of the famous painter – his paintings are clearly influenced by Van Gogh: lots of colour and a quick brushstroke with room for emotion. Over time, he used more water in his paintings to give the image space to unfold and give up some control.

In repetition of this one form, The Infinite Tree (De Eindeloze Boom) shows the life of the tree and delicately expresses something about the inner world of its creator. With an essay by art historian Rebecca Nelemans.