Visser, Jan

Bobbie Burgers is a contemporary Canadian painter. Her lush and Expressionistic depictions of flowers teeter on the verge of abstraction, bursting with bright color and laden with thickly applied, textural paint. “Flowers, to me, are the opposite of still,” the artist has explained. “Changing from minute to minute, they are perfect symbols for life, death, yearning, and beauty. My brushstrokes are layered with my own internal charges, depicting anger, frustration, softness, wanting, and more.” Born in 1973 in Vancouver, Canada, she studied Art History at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. Her work has been exhibited widely at home and abroad, notably including Art Market San Francisco and Equinox Gallery. Today, her works are in the collections of the Berost Corporation in Toronto and the Royal Bank of Canada, among others. Burgers lives and works in Vancouver, Canada.

Visser, Jan

Born 1933 in Namibia - Deceased September 2009

Jan Visser began his artistic career under the

guidance of Alfred Krenz., later completing his studies in Amsterdam. In Paris and in Amsterdam he attended graphic workshops concentrating on etching.
He lectured at the Ruth Prowse Art School in the late eighties where, “I started seriously to practise what I teach” says Jan “The landscape is and has always been a visual excitement for me. Only the female body gives me greater pleasure. I started dealing only with form rendered with light, shade and line. I approached the nude in a classic way; the female form as a pure aesthetic exercise, the poses and expressive technique evoking mood and context.
Exhibitions:
40 Solo Exhibitions, one in Spain.
Numerous Group Exhibitions in South Africa.

Participated in a State sponsored large group exhibition touring the USA and Europe.

Artist Statement:

I began my career under the guidance of Alfred Krenz. Structure in composition was his greatest message, one of which he'd in turn found in Cézanne. My first themes were the things I observed around me, initially cityscapes, the suburbs and still-lives. Then I moved to landscape. The landscape is and has always been a visual excitement for me. Only the female body gives me greater pleasure. To paint, that is. In both these themes I find the possibility for structure and line. So today my oeuvre consists mostly of the landscape and the nude. With a flower study now and then. Beyond structure and line, I look for atmosphere in the landscape. And sensuality in the nude. From the start, form when I first realised I was a painter, I knew that there were other paintings I want to make. I felt them in my head like spectres. Gradually these things have reached the surface, as via Jung I discovered more about the creative process, discovered mythology and began to experience the Bible as mythology.

As my technical skills matured, it became possible to me to give expression to the fantasies and the dreams that have always whirled around in my head as they still do. It's not that I want to paint a philosophy or a message. I'll put it this way: Just as the landscape or a nude creates the urge to depict it and therefore say without words: look and enjoy, so I want to say on a deeper level: look and be moved by the indescribable, incomprehensible state of being human.