the colour of coen

What is my personal colour? Which shade most stands for me: who I am, what I feel and how I come across? During a session lasting twelve hours, artist Rick van Strien found my personal shade: the colour of Coen. The colour you see when you look at the sun with your eyes shut. A warm rosy glow of pink, gold and blue. Dreaming. Feeling. Being. Van Strien translated that colour into the portrait ‘eyes closed facing the sun’. I chose that soft, fleshy and tangible warm pink as the basic colour for this project.

Coen van Ham (1971) focuses on the human encounter in his work. He examines the physical body and the psyche. In this way, layered paintings are created from personal emotions, social context and universal values.

Sometimes you meet someone who touches you. Wake up that artist in you. A feeling you can’t quite put your finger on, but you know there is something behind that initial attraction.

When Coen paints a nude model it is an intimate and fragile process. An intensive and intuitive contact with man, his naked body, feelings and thoughts. Van Ham wants to gain insight and give others insight. Identity is his starting point. Paint is his medium. Color is his language. Emotion is his story. This creates an expressive, colorful and abstract portrait that evokes emotions like a first meeting. Where the viewer ultimately determines what he sees in someone else.

His oeuvre is linked to contemporary expressionists such as Cecily Brown, Francis Bacon and Daniel Richter. But also classical masters such as Odilon Redon and Vincent van Gogh.

Mulan Go, GoMulan gallery, Amsterdam