He belongs to the generation of New Landscape Painters, from a renewed, even romantic interest in and belief in traditional painting as a medium to control, transform and represent emotions. Pasty and voluminous, often monumental, paint landscapes, painted with a passion to order his inner chaos and thus to arrive at a harmonious, meditative order in composition, colour and rhythm... in search of the sublime... the deeper meaning of beauty in that art of painting. Painted layer upon layer, from a compelling desire to order the chaos, a possessed compositional urge, which leads to the imagination of lush gardens and fields, where it is good and the power of beauty offers comfort. An almost dreamy painter's flight, energetically in motion, but also hushed and penetrating. Freely named after a poem by Slauerhoff, he himself said the following: "My paintings are my home/ colour and rhythm are my harbour/ only there can I live/ where I can refresh myself with the fire of consolation/ I am the paint bird/ painter of the blue hour". An almost 19th century fragile romanticism in a time that screams for recognisable images, and where an escape into vegetable-painted dream landscapes is perhaps seen as too light an escape. But the tension created in the constant, almost monk-like, call it Buddhist, repetition of the rhythm of the painter's hand, slowly but surely deepens the work into a mysterious, charged beauty, which makes one think and perhaps even offers emotion and comfort. L'art pour L'art!
Hans Keuls' work has steadily developed from autobiographical figuration, through abstraction, to the power, balance and dynamics that it reveals today, and over the years it has led to many exhibitions at home and abroad (Spain, Norway, Germany). His work belongs to many collections at home and abroad.
Two books were published about his work: "Paintings 1997-2003" in 2003, and "Rhythm of the Hand", during his first museum presentation in 2006. See also Publications and CV).
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