Biography

PAINTINGS

The paintings of Van Eeckhout are expressive, mysterious, nearly undefinable, suggestive and always done with a swinging technique.

He deserts figuration in 1965 and adopts abstraction. Influential for this new artistic direction are Walter Vilain and Kandinsky’s book Das Geistige in der Kunst. This change happens in the full Op- and Pop Art period. He chooses this mode of expression because he thinks that it is the freest, most universal, most spiritual and most in-depth way of artistic creation. A pictural « fever » wells up at regular intervals – the intimate necessity – and needs to be satiated in joyful painting with a great love for the holy oilpaint. Colour and form get a proper identity and create as by magic a mysterious ambience which one needs to undergo profoundly and attentively, as when one listens to music of quality. The making of art is an evasion from the daily worries and has a therapeutic effect. Being a fervent jazzfan, Van Eeckout created numerous JAZZPAINTINGS in the seventies. Many homages to jazz musicians are still traceable in his recent paintings.

In the nineties Van Eeckhout painted also often on big canvases, with large gestures and big paintbrushes in a wide range of intense colours with dark yellow at their core, a joyous salutation with Heimlich Gelb. And then the painter JAS gave him a very large number of small butter tubs containing self-made and already self-mixed oilpaints, resulting in a superposition of layers of different colours, which can be selectively spread with a palette knife on the canvas – la patte de l’artiste – resulting in a thrilling picturality that invades the work with a powerful and virile identity. The overall aspect is somewhat greyish and purple, but it becomes an exploration of its limits, which offers wonderful and unexpected possibilities that would never have been discovered with Van Eeckhout’s own paints. The works seem to be abstract, at first sight, but are in fact and in a somewhat concealed way, « figurative ». They are not the images of reality but its spiritual echo, i.e. SUGGESTIVE : each touch of the palette knife suggests and forms a more or less recognizable styling, a pattern, that enables the viewer to be creative thanks to his own interpretation. Although this « figuration » is not sought-after, it strongly surprises the viewer and arises from the depths of his own subconscience.

The roots of Van Eeckhout’s paintings are to be found in the works of Willem de Kooning, Bram van Velde, Asgern Jorn, Englebert Van Anderlecht, Kurt Schwitters, Paul Joostens and last but not least Jules Schmalzigaug.

Van Eeckhout has been instrumental in maintaining the strength of the art of painting. And still is.

PALIMPSESTS

The origin of his PALIMPSESTS is to be found in his COLLAGES of 1965-1966. To arrange, to relocate, to rip, to cut, to stick is more playful than to paint, but these actions are in fact to paint with paper and it is the love for this material that is decisive here. The contours can take all possible shapes. Once pasted, some parts are painted over in transparence, with acrylic or gouache. There is also a graphic angle thanks to drawings with pen, paintbrush or crayons. Van Eeckhout uses old, somewhat worn-out documents which are mainly autobiographical. They are musical scores, writings, stamps, cigar bands, wine and beer labels, old judicial texts. He is indeed a « conservator » of his past. On the initiative of Piet De Groof (Walter Korun), some palimpsests were created in collaboration with authors : Willem M. Roggeman, Frans Boenders, Rob Goswin and Guy van Hoof. Also with Emile Verhaeren and the visual artists Edith Van Driessche and Vincent Van Gogh, with the integration of fragments of their poetry in their own handwriting or with copies hereof. The intimacy and the authentic character of the handwriting is very important in Van Eeckhout’s eyes, and it is at the same time a form of drawing.