Mus

Hi, I am Mus Moments. I am living and working in my studio and outside in nature in Holland. Partly I live, study and work in Bergen op Zoom and partly I live, study and work in Hulst.

48 years ago (1969) I was born, having a Dutch mother and an Indonesian father who was not around much.

I grew up wondering and dreaming al lot. And also spent a lot of time outside in nature.

I felt and still feel grounded when I am outside, in nature. I feel safe, connected and alive.

“Back to basic” I call this feeling now days… Back to my roots. Breathing in and (letting go) out.

Everything in nature can inspire me. From early age until now.

Somehow I feel like “nature” has a mission for me. A commitment even.

I want to paint to hold on to those moments to keep remembering this connection and breath it in and out.

After my basic education I wanted to go to art school. But I didn’t find much support for that in my family. They didn’t take it serious and after all I needed a serious profession in order to “survive”.  So I accepted their advice and choose to study my “second talent”, Social Work. In meanwhile I kept painting. I studied technic, material and all the basics off painting while exploring the ideas that I wanted to work at.

Lucky for me it never stopped.

My actual life I still build on that frame. I still work as social worker in a social work job. It pays my bills. And in all left over time I try to paint as much as possible.

My drive to paint is nature itself and all the energy and ideas it is giving me.

I work mostly with oil paint on canvas. Canvas can be line or cotton.

I like to paint in the old fashion way. The way the old masters did. So to make it a solid profession by, for example, stretching my own canvas where I work on, building up my paintings from sketch, monochromic first layers, after that more details and collars. Oil paint and charcoal for sketches are my favourite material to work with.

In the process of practising and following what I see I developed two Parallel lines of work:

• The first line is my studio work:

Nature is my inspiration to start with, but here I challenge myself to step away a little bit from the original and balance on the edge between realism and organic abstract work. The subjects I paint are partly recognisable and the perspective is in a way that the viewer’s eye will catch an almost abstract total.

In studio I like to work on big canvas. Starting from 60x80 cm, also 140 x 100 cm until 140 x 120 cm. So I have the chance to dive into the painting as deep as possible and the subject itself has the change to overwhelm a bit.

Currently in this line I study shadow. “The comfort of shadow” as I found it, it could be.

The question I ask myself is: what happens when I leave the reality one step more than I do already. What happens when I play with the visible field and tension between realism and abstract,.. more,..playing with this edge.

• The second line is my Plein Air work:

Here I want to challenge myself to catch the moment as it is. (Impressionists)Not more or less than that but as complete as possible. I want to work fast here. Catch the spirit of the moments itself. Standing in nature. Taking my painting gear outside.

The win win situation between being outside in nature and painting.

Here I work on smaller size canvas because of the practical reason it has to be finished in maximum three times. And I have to be able to carry and transport it as well.

So that is what I do.

These are my art ways.

One thing I found out, working this way, is that one line supports the others.

The more abstract line is helping me to find abstract lines and forms in nature wile painting a Plein Air. Working a Plein air is helping me to get the real nature feeling in the more abstract works and to sketch is helping me to start and use all moment available.

To make art is such an adventure, which I am most grateful off.

Photo: William Brabant