My Fiery Imagination
With enthusiasm and great drive, this artist has continually challenged himself to expand and build upon his skills, forging ahead with an enviable artistic career.
Igrew up in South Africa during the eighties, a very turbulent time in the history of my country as well as that of the world, with the threat of nuclear war seemingly around every bend. These dark influences, along with the incredible people and natural wonder of the Cape, instilled in me a fiery imagination which drives most of my thoughts every day of my life.
My relationship with art began at a very early age. At first it was in the form of books, picture storybooks and anything dealing with the world around us. Curiosity has always been a major catalyst for me, looking to discover new things, and I found this nowhere more apparent than in the realm of storytelling. Through the course of a good tale, new things are being revealed to the audience. Along with this love of books and stories came an interest in the art that attracted me: Rembrandt and the Dutch Masters form some of my earliest memories on the subject. The theatrical depth found in their work still evokes a world of endless inferred narrative whenever I look at it. The local mythology surrounding the Cape is also an incredible source of wonder and horror, from Van Hunks and the Devil on Devil’s Peak to my nom de guerre, The Flying Dutchman.
A tipping point came at the age of 14 when, in discovering the incredible British weekly comic 2000AD (after 1994, censorship and sanctions became a thing of the past, so the cultural
floodgates were open), I realised that I could take up the torch of visual storyteller. At the time I had no idea how I would get to the end point of making a living at art, but I knew that I had to get cracking. From that point I have worked ceaselessly to improve my grasp on this practise, as broad as it may be.
My primary concern from the outset remains my focus today: How to communicate what I see, either with my eyes or imagined, to the viewer.
It was very frustrating initially, as all artists or musicians know, to clearly express what you want to when you do not yet have the skills necessary to do so. This also proves the death of many an artistic aspiration. A way to mitigate this apparent lack of progress is to start small, to limit yourself in your ambitions. For years I worked only in pencil and jettisoned the use of erasers early on. From there I migrated to drawing with store-bought pens on paper. Dipping pens, Indian ink and markers also entered the equation, but very seldom did I employ colour. It was simply too intimidating and I had too much still to learn using mere black and white. So on I pushed to the point where I found a very my unique voice using my inks.
This proved a dividing line in my career, as I found I had gotten a firm grasp on one aspect of visual storytelling and it had only taken me little over a decade.
In the process of forging a career in
the visual arts, the need for diversity as far as my skills were concerned, became apparent. After struggling with oil painting as a teenager, I took it upon myself to relearn the medium from scratch. The same way I had with inks, I started simple. Working only in white, on black canvas, I got a feel for the paint, figuring out how to create shapes and volume from a flat surface. Starting in this simple way allowed me a door into a new medium that was not overwhelming, so once I had a handle on it, I could begin considering colour, tinting a white underpainting with thinned colours or starting a colour painting using a very limited palette.
I began exhibiting work around Cape Town, both ink and oils, and a number of group shows followed. This led to a demand for my work, particularly small postcard-sized paintings based on photographs I had taken. In a short space of time, I managed to complete close to a hundred of these paintings, which basically served as oil painting school for me, although by the end of it I was thoroughly sick of working from photographs. Venturing into painting from life, I found that in a short space of time I could get very truthful, energetic results, far more so than when working from reference, often for days on a single painting.
Following this burst of productivity using oils, I expanded to a number of other media, including photography, digital painting and watercolour. Both in my personal and professional work, which by now was spreading across the fields of film, print illustration, fine art and visual directing, I found that having a deep and broad skill set an invaluable tool. From an early stage as an artist, I have had a fear of stagnation, which has caused me to ritually hop from one medium to another. In doing so I have found a renewed vigour, that every medium involves a different set of rules and approaches and that each of these serve to inform others. Inks require a certain thought process which is different from that of oils or
watercolours, but each can benefit from the different approaches that the other requires. In doing so, my work has been allowed to develop along interesting and unexpected lines, keeping my thought process stimulated.
In terms of ongoing inspiration and new directions in art, there are many avenues to explore. Often when approaching a specific task, I will deliberately avoid influences similar to the task at hand. Music, for example, is an excellent creative stimulant that will not directly find its way onto your canvas the way, say, Lucien Freud might. The same goes for photography, which can be a safer source of inspiration than other fine artists.
Artists and movements that have played a major part in my creative development vary from grand masters to the undeniably low-brow, so I will name but a few (otherwise we’ll be here all day). These are: Rembrandt, Turner, Van Gogh, Claude, The Impressionists, Lucien Freud, Egon Scheile, Frank Frazetta, Moebius, Geiger, Miyazaki, Frank Miller and the incredible sci-fi paintings of John Harris, whose impact on my sense of possibility I can never overstate. I am also an ardent student of film and architecture as well as natural- and world history, because I feel that a thorough understanding is required for an artist to effectively render his world and I have barely scratched the surface.
I work as a freelance illustrator, fine artist and creative force multiplier. My work is currently on show at the Penrith Regional Gallery, in Penrith, NSW, where it forms part of their Story Exhibition. The exhibition runs until 15 September 2013.
My website is www.flyingdutchmanart.com, where work can be viewed, purchased or commissioned. Contact me at hendrikgericke@ gmail.com Other handy links are: www.facebook.com/flying. dutchman.art and hendrikgericke. tumblr.com/
Many thanks to Woodlands Publishing and Artist’s Palette for allowing me this opportunity; it is always good to stop and think about the work we do as artists. ■