Hans Versfelt is a painter in the Netherlands who paints from life, either plein air or on-location interiors.
His paintings have that kind of clear immediacy, tactile brushwork and fresh color that is often associated with the practice of painting on location.
Versfrelt portrays the landscape, canals, boats, farmland, towns, bridges and even windmills of the area with an eye to contrasts of light and shadow and appealing color relationships. He works with crisp, blocky brushstrokes, often defining a form with one or two strokes of color.
Though his website is in Dutch, English speakers and others can easily navigate the galleries linked on the left. The first four are “Pictures painted on Location” followed by two of “Drawings”, two of “Portraits and Interiors” and one of “Portrait drawings”. The others are “Contact”, a “CV” and a link to Versfelt’s blog. (The link to a page of links is unfortunately broken.)
Non Dutch speakers can also try Google Translate (English).
Versfelt’s blog isn’t extensive, but still has works of interest.
I like the paintings of Versfelt very much. This is Holland as it is now. The paintings aren’t romanticized. (I am Dutch although currently not living in the Netherlands). There are still some quite spots (like the paintings show the cows looking at the water and around monumental trees in the cities), but look at the horizon of the paintings of the boats, cows and mill and you notice a busy skyline.
Hopefully Versfelt’s paintings make Dutch policy makers see we need open spaces to feel happy, poetical and artistically inspired.
Paula
Lovely scenic paintings, the use of colour relationships is most appealing – but I could not look at these paintings for long, my eyes would be constantly attempting to adjust the focus. A small amount of tighter detail would, in my opinion, add an extra dimension to the works – or I need stronger glasses – ha !
A wonderful painter-Thanks for sharing I was just pouring through the wonderful pieces on his whole site-Amazing!