You may be tempted to think Daan Roukens is playing with illusions to the eye. His graphics do play with your perception, and they do look like those graphic images where the image moves, or white dots turn black. But that’s not the point. It’s liveliness Daan wants to achieve. He aims to create abstract works that halts the viewer, and make them look at the painting for a while and see how the painting, it’s pattern and it’s colour are alive in some way.
Daan is fascinated by how paint and colors enable you to do so much, from adding accents to light effects. Color is an important medium through which you see the objects around you. Usually his paintings will start with a choice of which colors to apply. The pattern will follow. He plots out patterns and colors using the computer, and doesn’t start painting until he’s developed a colour/pattern combination that works and entices. While painting on the canvas, the pieces are developed further with exact color choices. Although daily events or his vision of the world are an inspiration, he’s not trying to relay a message to you.
Daan Roukes is naturally an orderly person, but does appreciate depth and casualty. Although he also makes prints of graphic design made by computer, painting helps create the liveliness he aims for. And have you noticed that all the paintings have white in them? The why even Daan couldn’t tell us, maybe it has to do with balance in the composition and pallet?
A challenge for him is also how to make abstract art more accessible. As with most art nowadays, Daan’s work is mostly seen online, on his blog No Rest For The Obsessed and social media, making the experience different from seeing it live. Daan started showing the process an abstract painting goes through until it’s done, to improve the understanding for abstract art and his vision on abstract art. The process of sketching, then creating the painting in layers, the time in between layers to contemplate what the painting needs next. People understand, see and feel abstract art better when they understand the process more.
Below: making of The low end theory
See more of Daan’s work, but also his inspirations, his t-shirts and more on Daan Roukens’ blog No Rest For The Obsessed. Stay up to date with where you can see his paintings in real life.
