One of my early painting fascinations was with the medieval polyptychs. I liked the way they seem to grow into the surrounding space. But also I liked the brightness of their colors, their graphicness, their brightness. I wanted to make a painting growing into space just like these medieval paintings. Since I had moved into a very large studio, an old factory at Villa Riberolle, which I had remodeled completely as Ideal Artist House no. 1 after a 2-year renovation, I had the right space to do so.

Polyptych no. 1 is a work I started and finished in this newly renovated space of Villa Riberolle.

Polyptych no. 2 soon followed but this time I painted it in a large pyramidal barn attached to a gentleman’s farm in Friesland in the north of the Netherlands. The barn measured 11x11x11m, had the shape of a Maya temple, and was a perfect place for this new polyptych Great Winter landscape (3x4.6m) consisting of 6 panels (1.5x1m, 4 in-between panels (300x40cm).

The light and the colors of winter time were used to do so: it was a winter with frozen rivers and lakes, and ice-skating.

Polyptych no. 3, Fall, was also done at the Villa Riberolle, IAH no. 1, Paris, after fall landscapes. Through the use of earth colors and different ways of working with oil paint I made “the light come out of the material”.

I started reluctantly the painting and therefore decided to go hiking in the forest, which I did in Sologne about 150 km south from Paris. I used most of the earth colors produced by my paint store in New York. I wanted to use these colors as if one could smell them, like earth in the fall.

I combined them with paintings in white and (cobalt-)blue coming directly from a previous series called: Les Vides (Voids). These were just blues and whites, applied thickly on opposite sides of the linen and brushed over and over trying to keep white and blue as pure as possible on each side of the canvas, blending gradually one into the other.

It is the first time I used this cobalt color, a bright blue made soft through the blending with titanium white.

All panels and in-between panels from these polyptychs can be seen individually or in any other configuration. The polyptychs are modular, although I do have some preferences for the compositions. For instance, the four in-between panels from Fall can be seen together and make a long 160x300 cm work of earth color going from lighter to darker. Similarly the in-between panels from Great Winter Landscape can be seen together forming a work of dark ultramarine blue.