Richard Smeets - Silkscreen, Abstract.

Richard Smeets
Richard Smeets studied at the City Academy of Fine Arts in Maastricht. Since the mid-1980s, his work can be described as lyrical-abstract. According to him, his work is created in three phases. The basis is an experience, a memory, which the painter then materializes in paint and color.
Richard Smeets makes little use of sketches, but works from the impressions he has in his memory. In that sense his works can be called expressionistic and they are related to Willem de Kooning, Karel Appel, Pierre Alechinsky, Eugène Brands, Ger Lataster, Jef Diederen and Pieter Defesche. He also chooses his themes from the tradition of art history.
At the beginning of his career, women form the central theme in his work. After that, his travels to Malaysia and Indonesia (his mother's country of birth) form the most important source of inspiration. In the third period, which we can distinguish in his oeuvre, the Dutch landscape forms the most important subject. He also draws inspiration from the famous work ''The Raft of the Medusa'' by the French painter Théodore Géricault, which forms the basis for a series of paintings dealing with the refugee problem in the Mediterranean. This project is entitled ''l'histoire se répète'' (2015 - 2018).
Smeets, like many of his contemporaries, is inspired by music, and conversely musicians Nard Reijnders (saxophone) and Bart Jan Baartmans (guitarist) are inspired by Smeets' paintings, creating a unique interaction between these art forms, which has been performed by the Netherlands Wind Ensemble, among others.
Richard Smeets also makes sculptures of bronze, corten steel and polyester that are closely related to his painting. A good example of this are the large bronzes with the title ''Tafeelgesprek''. Together with writer Marion Bloem, Richard Smeets made a book in which they both responded to each other's work.