Rutger van der Tas: From Rembrandt to Golden Girl

Nov 4, 2020 Artist Statements

SuperRare

3 years ago

We’re rapidly moving into a world where we are hyperconnected through all sorts of devices. Staying focussed is a problem when we disconnect from who we are. By painting and creating I try to stay in contact with who I am. I want to share this focus and concentration through my work. Bachelor Fine Arts, DOGtime 2014, Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam.

Building a Painting,
Collecting Data
and Tokenizing it.

<<Pantings\>> By Rutger van der Tas. 2020 <<Digital Art\>>

‘The Golden Girl’
Oil on Wood
40 cm x 30 cm
2020

“I’ve always Loved you Too”
Edition 1 of 1
I’m looking for the right balance between the classical way of making art, and bringing it to this Digital Age of NFT’s. The colors that digital tools give me, and the way I am able to draw freely add in a way to my offline work. It fills the playing field with pleasant and intriguing tensions. My focus mostly lies on the female portrait. I find her beauty is overwhelming.

I tokenized it on SuperRare.

It’s in the hands of collector : jedscryogenicstorage

I was pretty pleased with this state but it wasn’t there yet. So, I took it to my digital toolkit, GIMP, and and drew Mona Lisa as an overlay and added it to the picture.

Last year, when I was running out of options with oil paint and went through my drawers and found a bunch of tattoo ink bottles that were out of date. Since I find it hard to throw useful stuff away I kept it for a moment like this. I went a bit ballistic on my paintings and covered a lot of them with colors that flew freely over the existing images. A lot of the paintings I did back then I already sanded off and started a new painting on. The same goes for this panel. It was fun while it lasted, but not interesting enough to keep me triggered to look at it much longer. It had to go.

I’ve tokenized a Halloween version of the painting in 2019.

‘Day of the Dead’ (We all transform over time.)
Edition 1 of 1
I’ve added a digital layer on a painting that doesn’t exist anymore. This panel of wood is still “Collecting Data”. As an ongoing project. Check my site for the latest state. It’s a combination of Rembrandt, Fabritius and me. All in oil paint. But not around anymore. We all transform over time.

It’s in the hands of collector Virgendelcrypto.

Rembrandt “Rainbow” van Rijn
Edition 1 of 1
This is a HQ image of the original oil painting. I’m not sure if I want to keep the painting the way it is. Maybe he’s going through a phase. Maybe he’ll stay this way. Either way, this NFT is here to stay. I’ve painted Rembrandt in combination with The Goldfinch by Fabritius, his apprentice. I gave the self portrait my eyes and glasses. And gave it the rainbow colors to show some love for the LGBT community.

This is the third stage the panel went trough. I first covered parts of the painting with tape and gave it the Rainbow Colors to give compassion to the LGBT community around the world. I find it hard to understand that in this day and age we still live in all these ‘boxes’. So many people disrespect others because of who they are. We should all respect each other and care for each other, the world is already difficult enough as it is.

I tokenized it on SuperRare.

“Rembrandt, Fabritius and I”
Edition 1 of 1
I’ve painted Rembrandt in his style partly with my own face merged into it. I’ve covered my own eyes with tape. The bird you see is from famous painting called “Het Puttertje” or “The Goldfinch” made by Carel Fabritius in 1654. I love both painters and combined them in this work in order to connect the Master and his Pupil. The physical version of this Digital Art Piece doesn’t exist anymore. I’ve covered my own eyes with tape because I wanted to keep them and paint over other parts. My working process is very slow, and my paintings change a lot over time. When I keep working on a painting, I sometimes lose interesting versions of a piece. But now, using SuperRare and blockchain, I can sort of, keep that particular version, by digitize it with a scanner. I now feel comfortable knowing I “saved” the previous phase and then calmly continue the working process. When I find a new version good enough for an NFT I’ll bring it to you. The physical version measures 40 cm x 30 cm with 3 round edges.

This taped state is tokenized on SuperRare.

I started this painting in the end of 2018. There was an competition called ‘Rembrandt Lives“.

It felt right to try and make a painting good enough for the jury to participate in the Exhibition later in 2019. Unfortunately it wasn’t selected.

I’m not sad about this panel not being selected because now I had to more time to play around with it. Experiment on it, and make it better. (I know it’s pretty subjective, but I’m okay with the journey so far.)

I haven’t tokenized it yet.

But I’m playing with the idea…..

Thanks for taking the time to read this!

Kind Regards,

Rutger van der Tas