Ronald Versloot

Ronald Versloot‘s (1964) hallmark is the use of linoprint in paintings. In just a few apt strokes he delineates a landscape or an interior, in which he prints human figures by means of a linocut. With this he investigates the age old problem problem in painting,  how to integrate the human figure with the environment and background of the image. The lino figures are actors, as it were, who are performing in the painted setting. The question whether the painted images are real or rather the printed ones is intensified by the frequently mysterious representations. Each time it is as if you see the moment just before or after a dramatic event.

In his latest paintings Versloot goes one step further. He cuts the face of a portrayed man or woman partly free from the canvas so that it droops out of the painting. Thus the illusion of the painting is affected and at the same time increased: the figure breaks loose from the canvas and enters the room. In his pastels he also invades the surface of the representation by making holes in the paper or by partly burning it. A woman’s dress he gives real scorch marks and he makes a smoking man actually burn a hole into the paper.