Facebook regularly shows old messages and I came across one that showed a 'hand'.
It resulted in this text:

The 'walking evening four-day event' still exists in the Netherlands. You walk between 2.5 and 15 kilometers four evenings in a row. At the end you receive a medal.

Unfortunately I lost mine during the many moves.
I must have been 10 years old when I walked the four-day event. The last evening I came home with my tongue on my boots. But I was proud!

My mother was watching an episode of the 'Adams Family' on the TV.

Then it happened: on the table at the Adams Family house a hand emerged from a box.

That night I had terrible nightmares. The hand crawled towards me, horrible.
Is this the reason for me to sometimes grant hands an independent life?

In addition to compositional sketches, copies of beautiful paintings by others, diary reflections, I also scribble surrealist insights in my sketchbooks.

In 1992 I drew 'HAND IMITATES MOUTH'.

It was the beginning of a series of oil paintings of hands. First there was the oil painting version of the hand imitating a mouth.

Perhaps the funniest was 'HAND SCATTERS HIS NAILS'.

The hands series followed the heads from boxes series. But not out of boxes!

I wanted something other than heads, but with a 'human charge'. Here are the eight remaining hands.

In the text 'LOOKING FOR A STYLE' another aspect of the hands also emerges: the swollen shapes and their monumental effect. Once again it has to do with nightmares. My mother called those growth dreams.
Click on the gray text to go to the text and then the chapter: HANDS, MONUMENTALITY AND CONSOLIDATION, 1993-1999.

The series of hands was initially all small and medium sized. Twice, however, the hand landed on a large canvas. The first time to present something mysterious and luminous.

‘SHHH’
oil on canvas.
170 x 130 cm.
2005.

And the last time on the canvas:

‘SETTING SUN’
oil on canvas.
200 x 150 cm.
2008.
 

When I painted 'SETTING SUN' I had already moved to Spain a long time ago. Other subjects occupied me more.

Maybe one day the different subjects will shake hands on a canvas...

The person I probably would never have wanted to shake hands with is Henri Matisse. You paint who you are, just as the way you shake someone's hand says a lot about you. The fingers on his hands almost always look like a collection of carrots that have been left in the vegetable compartment for too long.

He couldn't have done anything other than give those weak, wet, sweaty handshakes. Bah! But if I ever meet this lady I will kiss her hands. Click on the image to understand why.

Barcelona, 27 november 2023.