The Paintings / Chronology

City Life & Body Language (2003— )
I consider my paintings as images about images (meta-images). They are reflections on the influence of images. I create the physical reality (the skin) of a painting, by giving 'paint' an independent dimension. I feel as much image-maker as painter. The paintings are a visualization of two concepts: "City Life & Body Language". They show the ambiguous link between the painted image and reality, by presenting 'reality' as a moving target. The paintings are 'ways of seeing', 'forms of visual thinking', they make the virtual and mental space of an image real. The power of painting (it is more than a medium) is based on the fact that it is a nonverbal, manual, immediate, silent and static form of art. Preview: Press Release

Cinematic (2002—2003)
Art can touch us deeply when it says something specific about the space/time we live in. For me, ideas are tools. With an experimental approach to the blank canvas I want to turn matter, surface, texture and colour, into imagination; when I paint, I enter the dimensions of the liquid image, an appeal to several senses at once. A painting becomes alive when it looks back at you, at this moment it becomes cinematic and activates our own individual 'films'. Preview: "Cinematic I" (2003).

Museums of the Mind (2000—2002)
Paintings and web site, www.doctorhugo.org
The paintings are visualisations of what I call the 'space of an image'. What I make visible is the connection between the meaning of the image and the structure of attention, within the field of vision. It gives the paintings an intense optical interaction. The viewer relives the making of the image. Towards the borders, the image seems to dissolve in front of our eyes. The atmosphere of the paintings is at the same time dreamlike and real: they approach reality, but go beyond it to become a mind map of an 'inner landscape'. Preview: "Visited Forest" (2000).

The Fuzzy Logic of Icons (98—00)
The paintings are based on synesthetic experiences —the interaction between the senses. I enjoy working with the dimensions of synesthesia. I love to find new configurations in what I see, hear, smell, taste and touch. Everybody is synesthetic to some degree. I see the fuzzy logic of imagination as experiments of the laboratory of the mind. For example in the painting "Ivory Tower" (1999) I bring perception and conception closer together. It is my intention to create new icons and synesthetic metaphors, to give the term 'reality' a new meaning, without seeking to mimic it, but to spell it out in terms of pictural power.
Online at: www.doctorhugo.org/synaesthesia/index.htm you can find one of the most extensive sources on synesthesia.

Fuzzy Dreamz (96—98)
Paintings and web site, www.doctorhugo.org/dreamz/index.html
I transform my new media experiences into painting and vice versa. In dreams we cross the borders of time and space. In this adventure, my scope is wide-ranging: from the main themes of perception, time and memory, to the immense diversity of the whole spectrum of human experiences. I interact with the (un)consciousness of fear, desire, tragedy, sorrow, joy, humour and surprise. Paintings like "What is Fear?" (1999) are presented as sequences: a montage of moments, a syntax of condensed and extended time, a juxtaposition of six paintings (diptychs and double triptychs). In "Fuzzy Dreamz" we are real close to 'who we are' and 'what we want'.

Interactive Dreams (94—96)
Pixel-paintings and web site, www.doctorhugo.org/I-Dreams/start.html
A visual research on the basic aspects of perception. More specific, an interaction between three concepts: form invariance, colour constancy and the digital image. The picture elements are pixel and grid. The pictures are build up pixel by pixel. The painted pixel is used in its ultimate elements —a maximum of mimesis with a minimum of pixels. I use patterns of pixels to create a visual paradox of abstract realism, yet, it's impossible to call it realism or abstract. These back to basics paintings reveal that the less information the brain receives, the harder the imagination works. A painting is a self-made reality.

New Models of Reality (88—94)
Pixel-paintings and 3D models. I analyse the visual structure of form and meaning. We see: simplicity, painted square pixels and constructive patterns of clear colours. I paint how an image 'appears', how a picture 'takes form'. This approach is based on my doctoral thesis "Art & Computers: an exploratory investigation on the digital transformation of art". The paintings are a form of mental cubism, a personal morphing of meaning. In this vision seeing is the intuitive discovery of an unknown unity. With the lightness of the imagination the 'Models of Reality' show that recognition can increase as the naturalness decreases. Illusion becomes transparent, non-existent. Preview: "Model and Painter" (1989).
Online introduction at: www.doctorhugo.org/paintings/models.html

A Vision is finer than a View (85—88)
Reinventing painting. I paint images of images, of facets and fragments of the endless sea. We see the restless energy of waves. A continuous metamorphosis of the element 'water'. What I express is 'nowness' —a microscopic vision of 'here and now'. Preview: "Rough Point" (1985). The paintings are as much image as imagination, as much sign as meaning. Their truth is closer to the experience than to the presentation. Outer and inner vision blend into an after-image. Painting is about visual experience. A vision is finer than a view.

The Nature of Reality (83—84)
The paintings are a synthesis of my early experiments and series on water, light and time. It is a psychogeography of the Irish landscape in thirty-one large paintings —from landscape to mindscape. A landscape is never static, both past and future lay claim on the present. I respond to the terrible beauty of the natural world. The enigmatic, the mysterious, the metaphor, the romantic and the unpredictable are all part of my act of painting. The luminous canvasses freeze and magnify time, they capture a passing glimpse of existential life forms. The tactility of the painted surface is like a transparent skin. It looks as if we can touch the inside of reality.

Cycle of Time (81—83)
Time is the medium of life. In the paintings we see a pictorial articulation of the rhythm of summer and winter, of night and day. Time becomes crystallised. These intentions also reflect in the titles: "Singing Summer" (1982), "Coming Storm" (1982) and "Breaking the Silence" (1983). The spectator finds himself in a world of silence somewhere on the horizon. Synesthetically speaking, it is as if we can hear the pregnant silence of time itself.

Cycle of Light (80—81)
In fifteen large canvasses I explore the nature of light. I observe the contrast and nuances between the light of the morning, day, evening and night. I study the colours and temperature of light, the recurring patterns in time. For example, the painting "Snow" (1981) transports us beyond the surface of what we know, yet keeps us grounded within it. The paintings show that light is meaningful only in relation to darkness —how light creates shadows, depth, distance and perspective. There can be no light without shadow, or warmth without cold.

Cycle of Water (77—80)
Motto: "Water that cries and water that laughs, water that talks and water that flows, water that shivers in the night". Water is a mythical element. Water makes life possible. Water comforts all the senses. In twenty-seven large paintings, I trace its pictorial analogies, family resemblances and metaphorical parallels. The paintings are showing an existential relation between:

1. The act of painting as a process between: wet and dry, sensuous and serene, opacity and transparency —I use experimental action painting techniques and water-based translucent layers.
2. A correspondence with the material world of opposites: hard and soft, solid and liquid, stone and water.
3. External reality, a context of conditions all related to water: the weather, climatic changes, reflections, mist, mud, vapour, rain, snow and ice.

Street Life Cycle (74—77)
Motto: "To perceive the perception, remembering is the isolation of a visual fragment". In a cinematic way, I paint the street life of a crossroad under the ever-changing atmospheric conditions (twenty-six paintings). All the works are based on personal observations, drawings, photography, film stills, video and Super 8 film. This slice of 'reality': a small world, a time/space continuum, a metaphor of life as a whole —becomes a painterly challenge. For over a period of four years, I paint the view from the window of my studio at Belgiëlei - Mechelsesteenweg in the city of Antwerp. It is an ode to common things, to the poetics of the changing of seasons, the rhythm of the traffic lights, scenes of everyday citylife. We see: passing cars, taxi's, tramlines, bicycles and the diversity of people. For example "Figure in the Snow" (1975). In the frontal figure an inner state of isolation is accentuated by the suggestive context of cold and snow. The enigmatic figure under a transparent umbrella is seen from a distance, standing still at the corner of a street. I paint the physical distance between the figure and myself. Preview: "Belgiëlei, Autumn" (1975). Basically, it is a sober conceptual confrontation between vision, image and reality. As a witness of the fragilities of my time, I am amazed about the extraordinary fact that the world exists.

The First Mind Expansion in Colour (65—66)
Presented at the gallery Wide White Space, Antwerpen. Ten paintings of glamorous women and female filmstars: Molly Peters, Malibu Beachnik, Carol Leland, Ursula Andress, Jean Harlow, Jocelyn Lane, Carol Lynly and Kristine Keeler. Together with Panamarenko, I made two 3D figures: styropor dolls covered with felt, "Feltra" (1966) and "Molly Peters" (1966).