Painting politician, political painter
Last week I mentioned I was going to participate in a four-day painting workshop by one of the best, if not the best traditional artisan painter in the Netherlands. Due to coincidental circumstances just today -for the first time in my life- I made this drawing with chalk on black paper. It was surprisingly educational: partly thanks to… Continue reading Quick experiment: chalk on black paper
Not a station clock but a special hint to the passage of time for me. In the last years of my mother’s life her eyesight continued to deteriorate, I inherited the thing after her death. I nowadays use the clock in an exercise to improve my own eyesight: switching accomodation between a raised finger and… Continue reading No station clock
In the catalog I made for the first exhibition of my oil paintings, I wrote that the first painting I made this century was a quick ‘Van Gogh self-portrait‘ (see below) in gouache.It wasn’t until after that exhibition that I realized that wasn’t quite right. I made the painting ‘Monerva‘ of which you see a… Continue reading Mona Lisa + Minerva = Monerva
Soon I will have the honor to participate in a four-day painting workshop by Cornelis Le Mair. One of the best, if not the best traditional artisan painter in the Netherlands. He has been painting for more than half a century and demonstrates and teaches the technique of the old masters. Those other kind of… Continue reading More (post) impressionism?
Only those who viewed a considerable number of videos from this Old Dutch Painter could have seen it coming: a video with observations and experiments with this special house plant, Monstera Deliciosa, especially its aerial roots. And yes: its fruit is edible but you have to be careful!To be honest I never had the privilege… Continue reading Botanic behaviour: the Monstera Deliciosa
Link to my e-book Link to the Long Text: Link to the Observation (The very little known Atatürk) About the Sivas Massacre About Enver Pasha’s reburial in 1996 Erdogan praising Enver Pasha in 2020
If you oppose #misogyny and or #nihilism the #transgenderism-agenda is THE issue you need to focus on in 2023.I kept the hashtags in this sentence: it is the pinned tweet on my twitter-account (frgroenendijk). So many political and social developments today are so infuriating or saddening that we absolutely need humour to stay sane. Luckily,… Continue reading Ultimate virtue signalling contest
How coincidental do you want it?In October 1927, Kemal Mustapha gave a speech that lasted six days. Yes, Fidel Castro certainly fell short of that with his six or eight hour speeches. When I was preparing my book “IS, the Kurds and the Caliphate. Turkey: from sick occupant to paranoid neighbor”. [The footer contains a… Continue reading The very little known ‘Atatürk’
Visiting Malta to get inspiration for my faction novel, this was the first photo I took of the capital, Valletta. Work was underway on the impossibly thick wall surrounding the new capital, which the Maltese started to build immediately after the Ottoman invasion of the island was repelled in 1565.So a restaurant was built IN… Continue reading Inspiration
Preparing a fourteen fold portrait of the great Frank Zappa I produced the preliminary you see below. The (black and white) reference photo you see in the middle of the photo above was (too) small. So I studied the (photo) of a statutue of him and close-up photos of eyes like those on the right.… Continue reading Finding that look in his eyes
