Updated: 3 days ago
A first letter
Here is my first newsletter and my first attempt to share my art, process, and ideas through email.
I have my thoughts about what and how we humans choose to communicate and I’ll try to use these reflections as a guideline for my newsletters.
This means I aim to find pleasure in the act of writing itself, which only happens when I make the effort to create something worthwhile.
I’ll also try to find a balance between words and images. And I won’t send this newsletter too often.
Before I continue, you can unsubscribe anytime at the bottom of this email.
Why this newsletter ?
It’s simply a direct result of my solo exhibition “Réveille-moi quand les nuages seront revenus,” held this summer in Paris.
The idea of a newsletter had crossed my mind before, but the real trigger came when visitors at my exhibition asked if they could subscribe and that’s how it started.
I like it when things go this way, not to get ahead of things, but to take action when the time feels right.
I’ve never really believed in shortcuts; we cannot force our natural growth anyway.
Another example, also linked to that exhibition, was my decision to create a small booklet to present my work and process.
Again, it just felt like the right moment, just before my exhibition in Paris.
The great advantage of waiting for that moment is that something you usually dislike, in my case self-promotion, becomes much more meaningful (and bearable) when the reasons are right.
Choosing a medium like paper for this inevitable self-promotion really helped me take this step seriously.
There’s a world of difference between quick images on screens and a thoughtful “production” on multiple pages.
Here’s a perfectly unremarkable picture to illustrate the booklet:
After months of preparing this exhibition, I was happy to live the experience itself.
I appreciated both the measurable and the unmeasurable results, and I also understood that giving and receiving are one and the same.
All well and good, yet I was very happy when it all came to an end.
So, I dismantled the exhibition, put it all back in that rented van, crossed Paris and the countryside, and found myself back again in our small village.
I tried to find the entrance to the house through the wild weeds in the garden, and finally entered a quiet home with no wife, no kids, as they were away on holiday. The studio had its own "wild weeds", with all the scars I had left there two weeks earlier, rushing off to Paris and leaving it in chaos.
Yes, back in the studio, but it took two weeks before I could work again.
The walk through both family life and artistic desire demands a subtle balance that needs to be found step by step.
And it was through this walk that I came to Spain, to spend five days alone on the Basque coastline.
I spent the days with my pochade box, the evenings in the trunk of my car, and the nights in a tent.
To keep this trip as low-budget as possible, I had prepared bags of food that I thought would last at least three days without a fridge.
They did, but only if I swallowed them with plenty of red wine to chase the terrible taste of the slimy brew.
These are just small prices to pay for five days spent doing what you love.
Plein air painting is such a strong way to be present:
to embrace the summer clouds over the ocean,
to hear the rain approaching before it falls,
to feel the ocean spray under a hot August sun,
and to finally lose track of common time, absorbed by the moment.
Here are the small plein air paintings from the Spanish Basque coast, all of them 10 × 12.5 cm, mostly directly on wood panel, some on paper mounted to wood.
With the end of my rainy stay in Spain also came the end of the summer holidays.
I then faced the difficult task of reconstructing my studio days.
This “switching” is often hard.
After months of external occupations, including exhibition work, travel, family life, and the freedom of plein air painting, one must find the “internal occupation” for weeks alone in the studio.
For me, constructing the day means following a strict morning routine, after which I find myself in front of the easel.
It sounds easy, but there are quite a few self-developed predators that try to pull me off balance: doubt, fear, lack of courage and so on, all just forms of resistance.
Normally, the switch is difficult, but this time I was surprised to find that I could quite easily reconstruct my days, moving through the routine without much resistance.
I think it was a consequence of the relief I felt returning to the studio after a record time spent on external activities.
Here are some of the paintings that have come out of the past few weeks.
Since this writing seems to follow the logic of a chronicle, I may end it with a glimpse toward the near future.
A new solo exhibition, this time to be held in the Netherlands.
I don’t know if it really is coincidence, because life sometimes brings us back to the beginning, tracing a circle.
In any case, the exhibition will take place in my birth town, Woerden, at Galerie van Slagmaat, from 21 November 2025 until 17 January 2026. The vernissage will take place on 22 November 2025 at 15:30.
I’ll leave it here for now.
Thank you for reading, and for your interest in my work.
Until next time,
Marnix
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