Categoriesonce in a lifetime bodypaint by Tulp
May 8, 2011 bij Galerie wildevuur
Dutch Tv crew films Herman Tulp (April 28,2011)
Opening show at Galerie Wildevuur April 24, 2011
Surpirse! The oister girl.
Brochure Gelreie wildevuur
EXPO GALERIE WILDEVUUR 22 April - 22 May 2011
Film expo Morren Galleries online.
Qct 21 2010
Words to offset the pictures .
Herman Tulp was born in 1955 in Zwolle. His father (after whom he is named), had a stationery shop on the Blijmarkt and later in the Diezerstraat, under the Bruna banner. Both were situated in Zwolle. He was also a partner in the Tulp printing business. During the war (1940-1945), Herman’s father was active underground and he printed and distributed “The voice of London”, together with his brother, Gerrit Tulp, who was the only editor the magazine ever had. In the Tulp residence, many evenings were filled with exciting stories from that grim period.
There was no lack of drawing and painting materials for the young Herman, as he could simply get them from the business. Many members of his family played an instrument. The emphasis was on classical music. Herman, however, discovered bands like Pink Floyd and The Doors, and he was immediately sold. He plays various instruments, but painting has become his great passion.
And yet he always has music on when he is at work.
He himself writes:
“I prefer looking to reading, so there are some short films, to complement the text. The films keep the site lively, as I regularly add new film clips.
I also thought it would be good to have something different to read in this section from time to time, and I will therefore regularly add new text. But in moderation, for I am a painter. And painters must paint.
To get this new website up and running, I have had to dig out old work and create new digital versions. Much of this old work had either not been photographed at all, or photographed hastily and poorly.
It was fun to see the difference between, for instance, older and more recent nudes. The surrealist undercurrent has for the most part disappeared in recent work.
Surrealism was “out” at the academy. It had to be unlearned! And not entirely without reason. Like many adolescents, I loved Daliesque tile floors, with shapeless humanoids and senseless spherical forms.
And if you are to understand form and grasp the theory of colour, it is better to focus on reality in all its jaggedness, angularity and roundness.
It’s about learning to look.
As an adolescent, I had also made a number of regular still lifes, or still lifes combined with interiors. That came in handy in my admission to the academy. There was hope that I would learn to capture the shimmering “reality”.
A post-academy work such as “Bus stop” (section Illustrations and more), with the crazy ape sculpture, a fish on a chain and a bus, makes it clear that our diligent teachers did not succeed in filtering out all surrealism.
I love the nutty paintings of the eighties, despite the fact that I made them during an unpleasant phase of my life.
In the period that followed, I produced a great deal of applied work. Book covers, posters, CD covers. The free work continued, but from a financial perspective, I and Hans Parlevliet, with whom I had set up “T&P” (Tulp en Parlevliet), felt it would be practical to have some “safe” commissions too.
From the nineties right up to the present, I have been able to enjoy my love of still-life painting to the full. I can’t get enough of putting together simple objects, often combined with some fresh fruit, arranging them into a little “village” and capturing this on panel.
The female nude is an eternal source of inspiration for me. Beautiful, aesthetic, and a little romantic is what I relish. I find the work of my world-famous colleague Lucian Freud magnificent, and his paintings of “naked man” are of course unsurpassed, but my approach is different.”
To be continued.