In the 1990s, two subjects began becoming recurrent in my paintings: bowls and landscapes. I used the two to tell ‘the story of silence’. Using minimal means, I attempted to summon up as much intensity as possible, reducing the bowls to their elementary shape and turning the landscapes into fields of colour.
Gradually, my attention turned from bowl and landscape to the painting itself. I began to consider it an object, or field, and let go all reference. This led to the ovals, the circles, the lines, the squares, and the stacked paintings.
The work more and more became an investigation into colour and its working, into paint and into skin, while I continued my quest for simplicity and purity. I was always searching for an essence, which I discovered the moment the painting received a ‘soul’.
The most recent works can hardly still be called paintings. They are, simply, visible things. I prefer to present them in installations where I seek interaction with the space and invite the viewer to enter a quiet, timeless world.
My work's genesis lies in the intensity of perception and it comes to life in the eyes of the beholder. It is ultimately perception itself being investigated in the work.
Janet Meester, 2017
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