signed ‘Diederik van Leeuwen’ (verso) acrylic paint
22 x 16.7 cm

For Diederik van Leeuwen, who was trained at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Rijksacademie in Amsterdam and who lives and works in Rotterdam, the most important creative inspiration stems from an early childhood experience. When only 8 years old, the artist was struck by a very heavy bout of influenza which nearly took his life. He then had a near death experience which had a profound influence on the Van Leeuwen’s work; threading a constant theme throughout his drawn and painted œuvre. Throughout his artistic career, Van Leeuwen aimed to do the impossible; to capture the light that he saw as a child during that pivotal moment. This has resulted in a large number of ‘studies’, as the artist calls them, which aim to capture the essence of this experience. The present work is one of the many works that is the result of this creative and spiritual journey. Swiftly executed with acrylic paint, the work seems to offer a small snapshot of this other worldly world. While the painting perhaps appears to be a purely abstract work of art in itself at first glance, it could in fact be regarded as an almost figurative painting of the ‘invisible’.