Man Moved Mountain : expo until the end of July

Man Moved Mountain
Sunday, june 23 – july 31, 2024
open:
– thu july 25 : 17-21h
– su july 28 : 14-18h
and by appointment
www.lecharbonnage.com

Man Moved Mountain
Sunday, june 23 – july 31, 2024
open:
– thu july 25 : 17-21h
– su july 28 : 14-18h
and by appointment
www.lecharbonnage.com
During the month of May I worked at Le Charbonnage Art Residencies by invitation, and as you could predict if you know me a little, I’m still working there :-D.
A month is in fact very short, too short, to work if you first have to find the raw material for your paint, if you still have to make paint, if you are used to working on one painting for about a month. Knowing that this Art Residency was going to end in a solo exhibition with the work I made here, I had to change tack.

So what other bow has that become? Well, the Genk landscape, loved by landscape painters in the late 19th century, just because it has been so changed by the coal mines, is now much loved by me. Before I was allowed to paint on the unloading floor in Beringen in 2018, I regularly went to the Genk slag heaps to walk, draw and paint. With watercolours. Nothing to exhibit, just, for relaxation.
The terrils have not only become beautiful nature, they are also a silent witness to what humans are capable of when they work together.
But did I just read watercolour paint? Indeed. And can you make that from coal? And then also goes on canvas? And does that also take you a month? And did you actually find coal from Zwartberg? Well, the answer to all those questions, you will get at Le Charbonnage Art Residencies, on Sunday 23 June, from 3pm :-D Exciting, isn’t it? I think so too. So I’m going to continue working for a while. Time is really short now :-D
See you soon!
Vernissage Sunday 23 June from 3pm to 6pm
Marcel Habetslaan 27, 3600 Genk
At WARP in Sint-Niklaas ( www.warp-art.be ) they love to challenge artists. For the group exhibition PLUSSING, they came up with a major challenge for me personally. Would I like to ‘come and do something’ on the walls, at their location? Make an in situ work? They asked to visualize my working method and artistic research alongside my coal paintings.
For the past 2 weeks I’ve been living with them (they have a nice studio for Artist Residencies), and my inspiration and installation grew day by day. In the pictures below you can see the start of the first day. I’ll finish it this week.
I would like to invite you to come and discover this installation.
The official opening is Saturday 13 January at 2 pm.
Please send an email to info@warp-art.be, or to me, if you can be present at that time.
The expo is open every weekend from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. until 11 September.
There is an extensive program of activities with summer bar, concerts, artist talks, … that you can discover on
https://www.warp-art.be/nl/programma/activiteiten_plussing
Welcome!
Added the first black magic today ;-)

… and added some more of my very black coalpaint

“COAT” arrived today, a new product of Stuart Semple, said to be the mattest coating possible. Since Black 2.0 isn’t “bullet proof” (read : is comes off when you rub over it with a cloth, even a dry one ), I was hoping this would be the solution. I do make my coalpaint bullet proof, and therefore I didn’t use the blackest version of my coalpaint until now in my paintings, because I only wanted to use real durable paint. I hoped this product would be a plus. But no :-( it adds gloss to black 2.0, so my blackest coalpaint wont be protected either. I’m dissapointed.
Late in the evening, Stuart posted a video to say COAT isn’t matte enough to protect black 2, he forgot to mention that … yeah, so I noticed… too late. I’ll use this product for other things.
BUT I do think I really had the coolest place ever to test this product.


Sometimes you have to take a distance… and you discover you’re in the middle of a crossroad.

About yesterday… for those who wonder: that photo was taken from the stairs of the framehead behind me. That was completely safe, it was even under supervision :).

In meanwhile, I’ve added some more very black coalpaint…

This week I added the mysterious darkness of the coal washing plant. Everything is still evolving as desired :)
Underlay: check. Composition outlined: check. Blue tape: check mark ;-). I would like to say that I am on schedule, but that would be a lie: I had an appointment to work here for 3 months… That means that this painting should be ready in 4 days …. completely impossible. Fortunately, those lovely people here gave me a month extension :-). Once again: thank you so much!

Playing hide and seek for the visitors again :-)



I make lots of coalpaint these days. Mostly I talk about my black coal paint (which is more black then any paint you can buy), but I absolutely love my brown version too. To make my brown coalpaint, I use a different type of coal, also found in this coal preparation plant of Beringen. It’s smaller (called “fijnkool” or “stofkool” in flemish). After turning it into pigment, I use a different diffuser to make pigment paste of it, and I mix it with different acryl binders then I use for my black coalpaint. I make it more glossy, and transparent. The more thin layers I put on each other on my canvas, the deeper the brown gets.

Yep, it’s still going according to plan :-)

It all went well this week. The painting I have in my head, becomes visible on canvas.
The previous days I finished my big painting, “Charbon de Beringen 4”. You can see the final version of that painting from february 10 – march 3 in my solo expo “Charbon de Beringen” in Cultuurcentrum Casino Beringen, Belgium.
Tomorrow I’ll start my third and last big painting here, on again another spot of this marvelous building :-).


Installed :-) I’ve been moving forward and backward all day to find the perfect spot in all light circumstances. This one is fine. I only have a some sunlight at lunch time :)

May I present to you: the subject of my last big painting :). The coal washing plant, and this cabin. This means I’m back “in the open’, in the visitors area. But this time I’m not afraid of them. I’m used to the environment now, and I’m no longer searching, I know what I’m doing on my canvas, I have a plan that I can explain. A whole different feeling then when I started here, almost 3 months ago.

I have to watch my steps on this location… so no more walking backwards :)


A new canvas on yet another location: because you cannot move forward while you stay in the same place ;-).
The glue had some time to dry, so today I started to brush away the excess coal, and put my studio easel back upright.
It looks like it’s going to be all right :) That’s the feeling I needed, after spending some hours in the hospital because of, again, a new outbreak of my eye infection. Seeing this really cheers me up.

Puzzling with coal, day 5. I filled up the last ‘upper compartment’ and experimented with different variations & sizes of coal to fill up the lower compartments.


Puzzling with coal, day 6: almost there. The first lower compartments now fill up the gap between the stairway and heaven ;-).

Now it’s time to brighten it up: I’ve been dusting off my canvas, and added more light to it.

This afternoon I had to go to UZL again for my eye infection, but couldn’t resist to drive afterwards back to Beringen. And I couldn’t resist neither to take my brush and to add some more shiny strokes, even though I had clean clothes on :-).

My painting is almost ready, but I still have to do a lot of finishing touches. Today I glued some more coal on the edges of the cabin. And I enjoyed once again the space around me very, very, very much. How many times can I say over here that I really LOVE this building? I really do. :-)


Sometimes you get more than what you hoped for. And it feels goooooood :-).
