KOEN DELAERE
Artwork

Oil and acrylic on canvas 84 2/3 x 59 inches

Oil and acrylic on canvas 71 x 49 1/4 inches

Oil and acrylic on canvas 84 2/3 x 59 in.

Oil and acrylic on canvas 84 2/3 x 59 inches
Biography

When Koen Delaere was young, he wanted to be a cartoonist. But he quickly learned that he was more interested in the aftereffects of his creative endeavors than the intended product. He was taken with the way his “hands looked at the end of the day, with all the paint on them, or the paint on the floor, or accidents,” he says.
Delaere’s current artistic practice reflects this early preference. It is highly collaborative, based in part on chance; it is dynamic and fast moving. It is not unusual for him to paint three or four paintings in one day and several hundred in one year. However, most of these do not go on to become finished works. He frequently reworks paintings, often using earlier ones as tools to create new artworks.
In his current paintings, paint ripples in corrugated surfaces, and colors swirl within the thickly applied material. He achieves this effect by using two types of paint; one is water based, and the other is turpentine based. “When you apply them together, you get tension because the drying time is totally different,” he says.