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 MARINUS WELMANI am Marinus Welman. a "Dutch painter of the California/American scene". I arrived in the USA with my paint-box some 50 years ago and settled in California. I think it was the right decision. I have been painting here ever since. I've painted up and down the California coast, in wild storms and in calm conditions, and in all seasons. For ocean painting, it is hard to beat the Big Sur area. It is is the most inspiring coastline in the world, in my opinion. Then there are the great deserts, the dunes and the mountains and the challenge of painting in Death Valley, and ghost towns like Ballarat and Skidoo and Body. (Years ago while painting in Ballarat in the Owens Valley, I met "Seldom Seen Slim", an old miner still looking for his gold strike. He did his own dental work and told me he pulled his teeth out with a pair of pliers.) Painting the flat landscape under the big Dutch skies of Holland and the stormy North Sea also yield interesting works. Amsterdam, my birth place and the center of art in the "Golden Age" is also a very good place to paint. 375 years ago Rembrandt thought so too. I sometimes think I have painted everything. Ancient and American history, the Civil War, the American Indians, and images of WWI and II, all have been put on canvas. Another lifelong interest is the study of the human figure. It is the most challenging aspect of the art of painting. I have studied in this area for decades and made numerous life drawings, paintings and sculptures of the figure. This continues to be a fascinating and challenging activity. Human history is recorded only in figurative art. I began painting as a child in Holland during the occupation in WWII. Later, as a young man, I roamed around the world's oceans on a wild freighter- a rusty Liberty ship left over from the war, leaving impressions that still figure in some of my ocean paintings today, especially the winter storms of the North Atlantic, and the blue shades of the Indian Ocean, or crossing the gulf-stream to the colorful Caribbean Islands. "For verily art is imbedded in nature, he who can extract it, has it." A. Durer (1471-1528) Welman studied fine art apprenticed to Jan Hazeveld. He attended the Kunstnijverheids School and the Academy van Beeldende Kunst in Amsterdam. Welman paintings are widely collected and are owned in many private and corporate collections in the United States, Europe, Iceland, Australia and Japan, and are exhibited in galleries from Palm Desert to Carmel |
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