Daan de Jong

My goal is to express an atmosphere and mood, related to a specific location or event in my life, with music as essential source of inspiration.

Daan de Jong (1982)

In my childhood I started drawing comic-books and occasionaly made sketches during travelling abroad. On June 1st 1995, at the age of thirteen, a huge change occurred and I started devoting all my spare time to a large comic based on the legend of Prince Valiant and painting.

In 1996 I began elaborating holiday-sketches with indian ink and watercolour, a technique that derived from my comic-style: these drawings, referred to as 'scenes', soon started to form huge series based on each of the voyages I made.

Since 1998 I have been making series of cloud studies, to improve my painting skills on this subject and apply them to bigger landscape paintings, using a wide variety of techniques, materials and sizes. These series, divided by season, took their own place within my output as I soon started to develope a powerful fascination for clouds.

By the end of 2000 I began working with oil paint, used for larger scaled paintings of various subjects, but even more focused on moods. On these canvases I try to express more reflections and feelings and the style of painting evolved into a rather symbolist language. As my father is a pianist I always listen to Classical Music during work and I especially tend to think in musical terms when it comes to making the kind of painting mentioned above.

My fascination mainly lies in depicting the mood of a particular moment and I have obsessions for romantic subjects such as ruined castles and clouds. Traveling offers the maximum of adventure and moodchanges, which explains why most of my works are based upon experiences abroad. My rationalistic side is visible in the exact notation of date and time at the back of each drawing and cloud study, as well as in my interest in different languages. The titles of my works are written in the language that belongs to the depicted location.

In 2004 I graduated at the Utrecht School of Arts and became a professional artist.