Bettie van Haaster
Everything starts with light and matter with me, not with words. I’ll try and find a shape in it and that will produce an image. That image says what I wanted to say but did not yet know.
Bettie van Haaster via Het Parool, 2018
Bettie van Haaster (1957, the Netherlands) works on a small scale. She uses several layers of thick oil paint that she applies wet-on-wet. With a limited palette, she creates a painting with many structure-rich layers and a tangible, rhythmic surface. She examines the image as it develops on the canvas and creates - playing with reality and the imaginary - a world that invites the viewer to interpretation, where the titles are merely suggestive. Although small in size, these works absorb both the viewer and the space.
