Photo by Leo van Velzen
Source: NRC Handelsblad, 25/Aug/2006, page 21

by David Leigh, POL magazine, published by Gareth Powell, 1975

Paul Bakker's sculptures arouse unwilling curiosities, stir religious antagonisms and demand forthright reactions. Which is quite understandable as they rather resemble a row of tightly swathed and tied corpses awaiting transportation to some mass grave-yard.

They lie in their square, shallow coffins, fixed in attitudes of either violent or peaceful death. Their stilled faces still contain a trace of remembered life, their limbs contorted in the death spasm.

Today I finished a painting very much like ‘The Yellow Tree’. In shape and size but totally different in feeling. Certainly the colours are darker. What sets me of? Often I start painting an empty room, as in this one, and have a way in the canvas to go to the left-hand room or the room at the back. Empty spaces and I add a few things to give me the shits. I make a clean geometric space and cause havoc. Then comes the clean-up. Then maybe the associations . Like this one next. In the left top corner I suddenly saw something ‘van-Goghish’, the colours and the dots for stars. Anyway, my own mind came to mind and that gave the painting a few meanings to direct me. Van Gogh and my Inner Sanctum. And my feeling of wellbeing, all lend a hand to the hand who holds the brush to paint the hand. But if I tell you sometimes things about my painting, like the Vincent thing, in a way I am directing your mind, or redirecting maybe. I mean, the way you look at my piece. My piece of mind. Art books are the funniest books when it comes to directional writing at times. The pomposity and deep down delving of the poor artist and his models. Keep imagining baby! It is so lovely when the mind goes on its little trips. I like to delve in some of the parts of my last picture. ‘Where can I build my dream studio/house?’.’ What does Clemens think?.’ I have always imagined my mind to be a huge sphere- like space, maroon coloured walls with way up against the ceiling a ramp built so hundreds of librarians/bookkeepers/nurses and other lifesavers are looking up things I need to know or remember. Tell me when to pull up my socks. Keep the place tidy because God might pop in. Don't forget to clean your teeth. I sit on a chair with my tiny side table on my right side. On it an empty ashtray, a bottle and a siggie and a lighter. In front of this cinemascope window I look out at Earth. I can zoom in and visit, for fun, my grave site. On the tombstone I’ll have had engraved: …BUT VISIT MY WEBSITE:..... Then I float on to wherever. Hang on!!! That is incorrect because that sitting in a chair is only after I have left Earth. Now when I walk around and move things or sit in front of the television, inside I am standing and hanging on my inner ears. Something like that anyway. The last painting was done entirely outside in the bright sun. On the most beautiful grass lawn. As I am bare footed this green lush stuff makes walking around with a paintbrush or cup of coffee a pleasure. It is truly ticklish and sensual. Our grass is covered with little blobs and dots of my paint. All colours and I wonder if this confuses the bees. We have a beehive in the garden anyway. How important is it to man to have a feelgood thing with the Earth he is standing on? As a spoilt member of this world, the piece of Earth I am standing on is only supportive. It is not a piece of land I look at in fear for a landmine. Or in lust for gold. Or to sleep on or make love. Is it dry and can it make bread? Who owns the land. As a kid, maybe 13, I already used to smoke a cigarette or two , a Lucky Strike, we lived in Abadan, Iran, and once I went with Jabba, the houseboy as he was called then, to the bazaar to buy bread and to get to the shop Jabba, a handsome young man with two wives and eight children, well four at least, had to push his way to the counter and push away poor beggars, the lame, the blind and the insane. Begging for bread. Today this is a daily picture on the tv. But the bread is many, many times the price. phb Now relax with 'Stary, stary night' by Don McLean illustrated by Vincent van Gogh. Lyrics in Portugese: