"I am preparing the frame, setting the action and stating the end.
My works are about controlling the paradigms of color and form."
Rob Bouwman keeps control over chance. Before he starts a painting, he never knows exactly how the colors will blend and what the painting will look like in the end. Yet he does not pull the squeegee energetically across the canvas in a matter of seconds. Rob Bouwman works carefully. He tries to control the mixing process. Control and chance. Rob Bouwman describes himself as a “control freak.” At a certain point, he loses control over exactly how the colors unite, overlap, and merge under the varnish. The result is a glittering, colorful work in which figurative and narrative elements are completely erased. If the small coincidence in combining the colors with the varnish does not exactly match the artist's ideas, he sands the surface—ready for a new approach with the squeegee.