Many people ask me: 'who is your favourite painter?'
We all have our favourite someone. Talk to guys and they talk with tears in their eyes about some football player or cricketer. Some more 'cultured' people can be over the moon for some cellist or writer..

Or car.

My favorites I never know. I liked the famous Australian Brett Whitley, and... don't know enough. Been scattered around too much on this globe. I generally like people who paint and often feel a bond from understanding. I need to meet a dentist who also loves to paint. Get rid of a phobia.
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It sounds strange but you must love your own paintings. So I like most of my paintings very much. This is no arrogance as I only hold the brush. This is a deep and true feeling I have.

Of all the artistic gifts man enjoys I think we painters are at, or on, the lowest rung of the ladder. Musicians, writers, singers have a gift beyond me. And they need such discipline.

I am not religious in the 'Religion' sense but have a strong sense of spirituality. I don't like to be smart about it so I made up a story that suits me.

God is an oldish man (sorry ladies), fat, white haired and grumpy. Under his bed he keeps all the arty people, the slaves, the eunuchs and transvestites. And as He has to change from minute to minute into a strict vegetarian for some Earthling, a Warrior God for another, a three armed Lady for others again, he is tired and so he is grumpy. He leans to look under his bead and asks whoever to make something nice or to do something funny. Not heavy, not too spiritual, but for His amusement. Not a bad employer, ay?

And sometimes He might see me (although I am not dead yet, but let us not split hairs!!!) hiding behind Salvador D. or a Roman eunuch bookkeeper, and say: 'You Paul, paint me something with blue, pink and brown'. 'Yes Boss, right away Mr.God', and I start working. A simpler life could not be imagined.

I remember a painter who was my teacher at the Johan de Witt lyceum in my first year of high school. I was late, 13 years, I think. Jan van Heel, he died a few years ago, was the art teacher and a very well known artist (1898-1991). I Could hardly speak Dutch, failed in every subject from algebra, Dutch to French and even English I managed just a 7 out of 10!, but I relied on my memory enough for just passes in history, geography and things like that but always far and far below average. I had happily accepted I was slightly retarded.

My brother had been to the same school and spoke even less Dutch at first but he had the highest scores on his school report when he graduated. So, when I arrived, the teachers said: 'Good, another Bakker!'. After just one year I had to downgrade to a lower school but Jan van Heel told me once: 'Paul, a 10 (out of 10) is for God, a 9 is for me and an 8 I give to my best pupil. And you have earned a 9 too!'. Wow, what an honour.

I met him many many years later at the famous Pulchri Studio (art society) in The Hague. He was very very old but I still loved him for the courage he gave me and especially for the 'who cares, as long as I can paint' attitude to life.

Having just finished a technical/artistic booklet with Clemens and here we see the difference between a designer and a painter. Rembrant (I love his work), when you look at his work too close up you see nothing. He knew he painted for the canvas to be seen at a normal human distance. So he could use big brushes and then, with a flick of his wrist make a brush stroke look like beautiful shiny blue silk, etc., etc. A designer, on the other hand, goes over his work with a magnifying glass! Clemens and I combined our approaches to our work to produce a booklet (for 2008) we are both proud of...

I love accidental stuff in a painting. Once my dog Biki, in Portugal, walked over a canvas as I often worked with my canvas flat on the floor but I definitely wouldn't take his little paw marks, his footsteps, away.

I don't particularly like reading, my mind doesn't easily concentrate long enough, but in Portugal I read Patrick White's 'The Vivisector' (1969). I remember thinking: 'He is not a painter writing, he is a writer writing about a painter but he doesn't quite 'get it'. But I loved the book anyway and remember the obsessive thinking of the main character, the artist. I cannot remember his name. But I seem to remember he pondered a lot about his LAST painting. I do too but I won't write about that yet as it could be construed as morbid. Or bloody mad.

Give me an ice cream and I'd tell you.

If you ask me how many famous artists do you know? Well, that's impossible. In the land of the blind, One Eye is King and in Armidale I was referred to a few times in the local paper as 'Our community painter' and well known artist etc. If I went to New York on the other hand, they probably wouldn't let me in a MacDonald's I think.

But I did meet Salvador Dali once. In Cadaques, Spain. A very nice old man and his hostess at the time was the pop singer Amanda Lear. We were with about 12 people and a BBC crew was filming him while some Spanish fashion designer was showing his collection. We were given a glass of pink bubbly. I visited there with my big friend and fellow artist Bert Haaitsema, a Dutchman. I remember shaking Dali's hand and it had no strength. We were instructed to call him 'Maistro Magnifico'. No problems. I understand that game.

I would have liked to have lived during the Rennaisance but would not have been good enough. I do 'feel' I was around in a previous life sometime in an early Egyptian era. Probably just a lowly paint mixer for a Pharaoh?

Who cares, the question is: 'What will I be in my next life', if we have such a thing.

paul