Most of the ideas I use for my drawings and paintings come from trips abroad, traveling Europe and North America by train and bus. After a while I turn these ideas, combined with a good bit of my own imagination into fully worked out drawings or paintings. The fascination for a particular idea that compels me to undertake the task of doing these elaborate works depends on the emotional value and appearance of the real world scene. Initially, when I began to paint I focussed mainly on (post) impressionist landscapes of Monet and Van Gogh. Thanks to the suggestion of friends, I discovered the art of Edward Hopper and American art in general. The art of Edward Hopper provided me with a solid point of reference I could fall back on in developing my own style. I kept on working in oils until 2006, when a visit to the great Andrew Wyeth retrospective in Philadelphia also provided me with the media suitable to my temperament as an artist, watercolour and tempera. I still greatly admire American artists such as Wyeth, Church, Bellows and Birchfield and in particular Winslow Homer. Being fully self-taught as a painter, I’ve been drawing already since the age of 10, creating my own imaginary cities on paper, as a substitute for the passion of traveling that has been with me all my life. These drawings were done in pencil. At home, I put the villages and cities I’d seen on holidays in these drawings. Over the years, I’ve enhanced my technical abilities and increased the amount of detail in my city drawings or cityscapes as I call them. Nowadays, I create my own world class cities comparable to Paris or London, in the latter I also find most of the inspiration for my paintings. Although both sides of my work appear as the sheer opposites of each other, there are definitely some connections, the love for light and shadows, architecture, a nearly geometric composition and the absence of movement. Currently I prefer to use... [https://stefanbleekrode.exto.org//#.Wn9wvoXBdWY] undefined

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