Dirk DeBruycker

Dirk De Bruycker, (1955 - 2015)

The formal influence of certain of Dirk De Bruycker's antecedents is readily apparent while that of other forebears is more felt than seen, more conceptual than material. His kinship with the groundbreaking mid-century American abstractionists is notable and he cites the works of Willem deKooning, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollack, and Barnett Newman as being of particular importance. Techniques of staining the canvas and pouring of paint, that De Bruycker has long utilized, are strategies that connect his aesthetic DNA to that of Pollock, Rothko, Arshile Gorky, and to the Color Field school painters Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler.

De Bruycker's method is a unique and unconventional process that has evolved over decades of studio practice and experimentation. A progression of distinct phases begins with the application of an underlying structure, painted with thinned asphaltum onto raw cotton duck canvas. This is the only stage of the process in which De Bruycker makes use of a brush. Applications of pigment, cobalt drier, paint thinner and gesso follow; the canvas is scraped with improvised squeegees, then tilted and rotated to direct the flow of color. The painting is periodically set aside to dry, allowing the media to interact and some of the underlying imagery to migrate up throughout the layers.

When asked how the environment influences his aesthetic, De Bruycker says, "I think some of the intensity and sensuality of Latin America has crept into my work. There is a feeling of unease here below the surface that is palpable and yet it is so beautiful here. The force of life here is so strong; it permeates everything- you can literally hear things grow. I think it is some of that intensity of life, which is very different from my cooler northern European sensibilities, that I have allowed to surface in the paintings."

Peder Kolind, a Danish citizen who now calls Granada home, has amassed the largest single collection of De Bruycker's work, referred to as the "La Bocona" collection". The paintings, which span a period of 18 years, reveal the development and application of what De Bruycker calls the "painterly logic" that guides his work. The painterly logic is at the heart of De Bruycker's work and it describes not only his process of instinctive physicality and precision but the life of the artist as well - "solitary creativity, living like a cat, capitalizing on the moments of focus." The vicissitudes of chance are welcome.

(Excerpts from the essay, Dirk De Bruycker at La Bocona, by David Clemmer , 2013)

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