Stef Driesen, Ondertoon/Undertone

Text by Céline Mathieu

Colour patches like a child’s recollection depicted something of a landscape paint
applied, scraped, washed
dynamic full body shapes

an absence
body as architect, host
patches of light, colours like scarves or
more defined in-between spaces, presence as opposed to grey purple voids concretes and the latter, painted like a body too
skins in a Lucian Freud way
the image unfolds, gently silently
like a dark alleyway in a movie
and sometimes sharp modern maybe
the shiniest matte, the yellow like a parrot
in Vondelpark
whispering no matte no
a painting of the memory of a painting
browns like a garment, shifts and nuances,
an apparition a flaw of eyesight
patched up a bit like a wall repainted here and there after it was smudged and at an angle you see the colour difference
it is subtle liveliness,
model drawing of silence,
Undertone

And then it becomes language after being body architectural map
and red like a lip or a necklace
pink incisions like a dress or is it a mountains scape a further from this point on

feeling the viewing body view and reorientate keep looking magnetic suction cinema almost when the image as if seen from a train turns upside down now portrait

We came here after I was lost twice
he picked me up from the corner
the wind pushing heavy streaks
and now here the orange fire in the stove the tranquil studio, paint tracing directions, and it

would be a platitude to say that painting is about looking
but LOOK! Windows.