Biography

During his studies at the AKI in Enschede,GertjanScholte-Albers (1971 Valthermond, Holland) decided to leave the concept of painting in a studio and embraced the rich experience of painting ‘en plein air’.

For fifteen years he has been painting outdoors, riding his bicycle, to use the elements in feeding his experience of the landscape.

aan-het-werk-kl“I experience the changing atmosphere, the direct light and the vast spaces. They give me a feeling of joy.” Scholte-Albers paints in the woods or on the high grounds of Groningen where he lives. He is capable to convert the joy he feels when working outside into his own colour harmonies. He calls this: “an urge to satisfy the joy of my eye.”

Remarkable is that his landscapes are not realistic. He paints with colours, which hardly occur in nature. He converts the contrasts of light and dark that he sees in the landscapes into his own bright colours.

negatief-positiefScholte-Albers tries to combine intuitive choices of colour with the experiments of his own designed colour circle. He used this circle for changing the colours, much like a photo negative. By intensely studying visible colours and contrasts with broad-leaved trees, a need emerges for painting in a positiveimage.

He increasingly paints what he sees and changes the colours of the background to investigate the effect of colours on the foreground. Thanks to his experiments with the colour circle and his intuition this painter is capable to create an enormous variety within each colour. The constant need for these investigations and experiments play a major role in his work.

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