David Janssen
“I don’t remember ever making the decisions to become a painter. Probably due to the fact that my father was an artist, I saw a life as thus possible.” After one year of art school in Brussels, David Janssen decided to follow his own path, studying and working with various artists in different countries such as Belgium, Austria, Bulgaria, and France. David Janssen sees art as a tool for self-understanding, a personal quest for personal truth. The only way of finding this truth is through following his instincts. This requires a great deal of freedom; freedom as moving within the narrow frame that he assigns himself. Never being satisfied with a first impulse, a mind full of critical objections, never to give into spontaneous enjoyment, for the truth always lies beyond what is acceptable to Janssen For David Janssen, being a figurative painter, takes the human being as a main subject, the way that we exist in an environment, and in the world, and in relation to others. In the process of painting, Janssen never chose what to paint. “The only way I know in what direction to go is through self-critiques.”