Ambassador
Wolf Hekkema is a young artist based in the Netherlands. His oil paintings have a distinct style and the psychological aspects in his work are clear - humans as well as animals with humanoid features are warped and surrounded by a swirly, alienated atmosphere.
His slogan is: the mind is constantly roaring
Wolf Hekkema was born in Rotterdam, The Netherlands in 1999. During his childhood, he drew many hours a day as a way to process difficult situations and feelings, which he encountered often in the urban environment. It was only in his teenage years that he started applying paint onto canvas, which at first he thought was messy and smeary.
In 2018 he applied for the Bachelor Art History at the University of Amsterdam and in 2020 for the minor Conservation and Restoration of the Cultural Heritage. In the same year, he participated in the Dutch tv-programme and painting competition Project Rembrandt. He won the competition and his final work was exhibited in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. In 2021, he was involved in a subsidized project revolving around the interviewing of artists all around the Netherlands and taking a closer look inside their working space. He currently works as an independent artist and painting teacher in Amsterdam.
Wolf was immediately sold on using Cobra oil paint, which was just released at the time he picked up painting. It enabled him to work very thinly with a mix of water before applying thicker layers. He also used Cobra paint during the Project Rembrandt competition.
Since a few years, he has picked up a self-invented working method that specifically uses Cobra paint’s properties to manufacture his art. He works extremely thin on a white ground canvas, rubbing in paint little by little. The effect is a transparent, grainy image that possesses a certain lightness.
His subjects, however, are often heavier - Wolf went back to the process of visualizing difficult feelings and thoughts that occur to him and others on a daily basis. The psychological aspects in his work are clear - humans as well as animals with humanoid features are warped and surrounded by a swirly, alienated atmosphere. His slogan is:“the mind is constantly roaring”.
FEATURED ARTWORK from WOLF HEKKEMA
Own Business, 2021 70 x 100 cm, cobra oil paint on canvas "Although I have now reached an adult age, I often still feel like a fragile little boy, with all the uncertainties that go with it. In 'Own Business' I have tried to capture this feeling - at the centre is an admittedly herculean 'male' figure, with angular forms and large, gnarled hands, but the doubts and struggles can be read in his face, his hands, his legs. Although people sometimes try to appear imposing to the outside world, their true nature will always show through."
