The European painter Mr. Pieter Holstein was invited by CEAC to Xiamen as the first artist in residence to work here and make a show of his art. In the last three months Mr. Pieter has created many works, which we can see now here in the show.

He loves Xiamen and the long historical culture of China. Several times he expressed his love and addiction to Chinese traditional art to me. He has the feeling that one can appreciate beauty from the Chinese traditional painting in many different ways and expressed the following Contemporary artists are more focused on creating or inventing an own style than reflecting on the reality of our times. Ancient traditional painting has an abstract richness. The traditional style nowadays tries to keep that richness intact but lacks often a reflection on the reality of our times and it lacks often life, inventiveness, variation and the spirit we find with the old masters.

Maybe Mr Pieters opinion can give us some help to understand and appreciate his art of land. He seldom paints cityscapes, but is more inclined to feel and express something about landscape. The image he has created is just like nature itself, pure and direct. Pieter’s seeing is very unique, as we can see from his work that does find the rhythm of the line from the wave of the water,
and dynamical reaction between the dots and lines from mountain and water.

The soul of nature comes to pieter with its richness which drives him constantly to find
and give new life to the form and space. From his art we may see some similarities between
his landscape and the Chinese ancient art, even though he apparently remains individual in
his painting. I think this kind of combination is especially charming when art today is
becoming more and more international.

Gallery