Painters 2015
Diederik Vermeulen
From studying psychology in his youth
to working as a math professor years
later, Diederik Vermeulen has done
it all and yet, if you ask him, none of
it was all that inspiring. Fed up with
the bureaucracy that life flings at you,
he packed his bags and headed off to
live in a shed in Quelfe, a small parish
in Olhão, Portugal. Leaving the
drivel of society behind, he found an
asylum away from the blast and glare
of so called civilization. He began a
new relationship; one with nature and
numbers.
Isolated and elated, Vermeulen painted
the flora around him, beginning with
a study of the plant life immediately
outside his cabin. Deeply engrossed in
his mission, he produced one hundred
and fifty paintings of the weeds on his
property, and went on to paint a series
of trees - almond trees, fig trees, olive
trees.
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When we asked Vermeulen why he felt compelled to paint, he half-jokingly said, “I am not compelled to paint at all!” He went on to explain that, “It began as research at first. I wondered how painting was done and thought about it more like a mathematical equation.” But although he often talks about his art in a practical tone, Vermeulen is by no means numb to his subject matter. This is the third time he has attended the Lamu Painters Festival and he appreciates the culture, “the beautiful people.” Today Diederik Vermuelen lives between Holland and Portugal. He has participated in several exhibitions in Portugal, in the Netherlands at the Ton Warndorff Gallery in Haarlem, and in Germany at the Galerie Rose in Hamburg. He is represented by Peter’s Rij’s popular PR2 gallery in Amsterdam.
