Born 1957 The Hague, The Netherlands.

Professional artist since 1993

Numerous exhibitions in leading Dutch galleries, as well as in galleries in the United Kingdom (London, Oxford, Newcastle, Worchester), Denmark and France (St.Malo).

Rob van Hoek has been exhibiting at many International art fairs  in The Netherlands, UK, Belgium, France, Sweden.                                                                         

"During all my years of painting I have been inspired by the landscape, especially the cultivated landscape. Wild, rough and virginal landscapes are beautiful too, but no subject of my paintings.

The patterns, lines, rhythms and shapes of (harvested) fields, these are a few items that make the cultivated landscape so inspiring to me. And of course the sky above, adding space, light and atmosphere.

Perspective is used in a playful way; sometimes flat, sometimes with depth, often both character. 

On a gesso structured canvas, I paint with oil, mixed with some wax-medium.

I work with rather large brushes, and after the first stage I begin to carefully remove some of the paint, while “drawing” in the wet paint with a brush, the backside of a brush, a cloth, a tissue, a Q-tip or whatever is suitable for making the lines, the forms, the dots etc. Some of the lines and figuration are made with oil pastels.

All the titles I use are lines (or parts of lines) from song lyrics. Mostly from pop music, sometimes a title of a jazz song. There are so many references to the landscape to be found, (and the sky, the weather, the time of day, the time of year, and so on), which I thankfully use.

Usually I give the title to the painting when it is finished, browsing through my collection of songlines and selecting the most appropriate one. But sometimes I make a painting with a particular songline in mind.

Working from this concept is inspired the novel “The Songlines”, by Bruce Chatwin." Rob van Hoek