Ton van Kesteren - Beautiful colorful large screen print

Born: April 27, 1942 in Brastaghi
Education: St. Joost Academy of Fine Arts in Breda,
final diploma from the VSVU Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava (Slovakia)
7 months stipend
Painting is a constant battle between order and chaos, a constant battle between balance and distortion, between the tension of beautiful and ugly. I want to make good work that is not only beautiful. It must radiate power and also contain question marks. A kind of magic. To be able to surprise myself in that.
Aesthetics are important in my work.
That is part of the way I look. That is the qualitative standard that belongs to me, but that I also want to break through, change. The urge to escape from one's own aesthetics is an important driving force, it produces surprising and inspired work. There is almost always a reference to nature, the world around us.
The work has no symbolic meaning or profound conclusions, the artwork stands alone, as a resting point, finally found on the journey into the unknown.
Inspiration is manifest daily through contact with the "outside world".
The most important thing is "looking and feeling".
Almost always, a sketch is used as the starting point. Nothing else is fixed in advance.
It is the experience and the memories that, guided by emotions and writing, give birth to the painting. The painter has preceded the viewer into a wild and unknown terrain and has brought about a decisive order in it. Each part is stopped separately at the moment when it is at its most intense and radiant.
The actual experience may have faded, but the memory of it has solidified and frozen in paint. Has become a painting.