Robert Holyhead, Open Ground; Parts Project, The Hague

Parts Project’s second show is a worthy successor to the first one in its sheer quality and uniqueness.

The gallery has turned into a kind of white cube and exhibits works by British painter Robert Holyhead (1974).

Holyhead’s first retrospective exhibition (yes, indeed! and right here, in The Hague!) shows him as a painter’s painter.

Any painter who knows the craft also knows about the thickness or fluidity of the material, knows about oil, water and pigments and how they behave and knows how to tame them while using their characters and properties.

Every painter also knows that this is a daily challenge.

Another daily challenge for the painter is the pureness of the idea expressed in the painting and the way individual aesthetics become part of it.

All these aspects come together in Holyhead’s paintings.

The way the paint is brushed on the canvass and the fluidity of the oil tell the story.

Shapes may remind you of windows or just lights in space.

Geometric shapes find themselves floating in monochrome paintings, or wrapped up in paint.

There are also water colours on show which more or less form the nucleus of Holyhead’s activities.

His works are sensitive, nuanced but also expressive and as such it is almost an insult to make photographs of them.

It is far better to go and see the real thing and take a very close look.

I recommend this show to every painter who reads this.

[Click on the pictures to enlarge]

Contents of the pictures courtesy Robert Holyhead and Parts Project

 

Bertus Pieters