Hennie Huijgens

In addition to my work as an artist, I have been active for many years as a scientific researcher and organizational consultant. I received my PhD in computer sciences from TU Delft in 2018. I therefore like to approach my art projects in a professional and investigative way, in which I study a work of art or an idea for a series of paintings from different angles from the perspective of triangulation. I therefore like to call myself an 'investigative artist'.

"I love paint, color and complex stories, whether they are true or not."

I am a Dutch-born artist, and I live and work in Amsterdam since the 1980s. As a true colorist, I have a preference for the material side of painting: I love paint, color, and fiddling with canvases and mediums. I usually work on larger canvases and use mainly acrylic paint, trying to create effects such as glazing, gloss, transparency and thick surface structures with all kinds of mediums and gels. My  role models in modern and contemporary art are the ‘real painting heroes’ from abstract expressionism, but I also love the more figurative post-expressionists and pop-art painters. From my graphic background, I find the prints ('druksels') of Hendrik Werkman inspiring for the use of text and geographical forms in his work. More recently, I finds inspiration in the work of contemporary landscape and portrait painters and in the idea of ​​art as a total concept in which multiple disciplines such as slideshows, music, voice-overs, text, poetry, and archive material come together. In my recent work, I regularly investigate and comment on the use of new technologies such as artificial intelligence to explore and challenge creativity and ideation.