Soon I hope to exchange Barcelona for my home country. After twenty years it is time ‘to go home’. Already memories come to haunt me as they say. Let’s go back to the year 2000, the year of my arrival in Spain.

It kicked off well. I had a commission for the Emirates Twin Towers Hotel in Dubai. From the desert an interior designer had called me with the request.

If I could make a series of portraits for the Italian restaurant…

There was a slight misunderstanding about the sizes of the works. He had seen my portraits in a catalogue and taken the measures of the images on the page. Instead of fifteen centimetres the real compositions were two hundred fourty four high.

In the end we found a good size for the canvasses: forty five by thirty five centimetres.

So when I moved to Barcelona I immediately started the project: thirty-five portraits with as ‘victims’ friends of mine. Every person was portrayed three times. Underneath you see the series of portraits.

It has always stayed a riddle for me why they wanted thirty-five portraits and not thirty-six. The reason may be that thirty-six is a holy number in the Arabic Culture, but I am not sure… Who can help me out?

Why I had come to Barcelona? One of the portrayed was the reason.

I finished the assignment and it was shipped to Dubai. Unfortunately I only have three small photos of the restaurant with the paintings. I never saw it myself.

'MY METROPOLIS', THE PORTRAIT SERIES.

The interior designer had seen the series ‘My Metropolis’ in the catalogue. Years before I had started making these portraits living in New York. Impressed by the skyscrapers I ‘constructed’ my own buildings by stacking series of three of the same person on top of each other.

In total seven ‘My Metropolis’ compositions were made. Three in New York, number four was finished in Amsterdam.

My Metropolis 1, 2, 3 and 4

All four: 244 x 546 cm (each 244 x 136,5 cm)

Five years before the commission for the Emirates Twin Towers I made number five. It went to Milan. 

Family Civitelli

244 x 136,5 cm

The most complicated 'My Metropolis' painting was portrait of the family Theunissen. I composed a 'circular composition'. The colours of the top three returned in the bottom three. This made that one could start with any and then fit the others underneath. Here you see the same painting in three different compositions.

Family Theunissen

366 x 136,5 cm

2003.

The last 'My Metropolis' work I made for the Paushuize in Utrecht. It shows the last four Dutch Queens.

Paushuize is the representative palace for the province of Utrecht. When visiting the queens slept there.

Four Dutch Queens and in interior.

244 x 236,5 cm.

2005.

For more information click on the image.

'MY METROPOLIS', YES OR NO?

I started the 'My Metropolis' series in New York by portraying friends. I wanted to be surrounded by my loved ones that lived abroad. Three portraits of one person had to do with the idea of the 'self-image', the 'self-worth' and the 'ideal-self'. Who do we think we are, what do others think of us and what do we want them to think of us? 

This way of portraying I have continued over the years apart from single portraits. It depends one the wallet and courage of the client.

Only once I made a three some of myself. It ended behind a sofa!

What I considered a 'My Metropolis' painting was the idea of four people in three, but is it limited to that? In a city not all buildings are skyscrapers. Are not all the portraits part of ‘my Metropolis’?

Underneath you see a selection of the portraits I made between 1994 and now. I start in France with the children of friends of mine. They live in what for me represents paradise on earth. There is family, there are friends, there are strangers. Last image is of a potrait, the photo taken in the studio and me looking in the mirror. My way of painting has changed over the years. Life means growing and changing. Maybe not always for the better. That is up to you to decide. Click on the image to go for a better look at the portraits on my site.

Have fun and maybe the desire to become part of my city?

Barcelona, October 9, 2020.