Hendrik Arie Baartman

Hendrick’s Art StatementnnArt is a drug dear people and creating art, drawings and paintings, sculptures and digital or computer art is my ultimate catharsis. It is my way of purging and cleansing my mind. It is my ……… "Rite of purification". It is how I get the crap out of my head ....... its how I stay sane in this insane thing that is called reality. It's like a drug that I am brilliantly addicted to. So addicted have I become, that my body chemistry has changed, acclimatised itself to the drug, ART. Without this drug I go into withdrawal. I begin to wither and die. I become stupid and foolish and pathetic. My specialness is gone. I begin to change into this thing that is worthless and not deserving of existence. In other words, my art defines me, without it, and the constant creating of it; I am nothing, less than nothing.nnMy artistic expression is my way of vomiting the mental debris that accumulates in my conscious and my subconscious. My work springs forth from my subconscious. I do not know what my artworks will be before they begin to become what they are. Rather than a deliberate idea which is executed with forethought and preparation, my works are born. My work is spontaneous, not thought out beforehand. Occasionally I will base a work on an idea, but the artwork will always take its own road. My hand and arm are an instrument being controlled by the idea being born ... The art controls me, I do not control it. It has a will of its own. It's a thing giving birth to itself, flowing on free will out of the brain.nnOnly when I begin to visualize what is being born, only then will I begin to exercise some deliberate control and manipulation in its creation. This is the time when I must draw upon my discipline because I am in danger of becoming bored with the work. Once I know what it is, the execution of the work is far less interesting to me. The surprises are over. It then becomes a labour to complete. Going through the motions necessary to complete the artwork is a bore ... It is during this stage that I run the risk of casting the piece aside to begin a new one. I become frustrated with the time it takes to finish, and sometimes I won't finish. It is only through self-discipline that I do complete most of my art works. nnWANTED VISIONSnnAll I truly want in this life is to harness the visions which I constantly see. I do this by drawing them. I capture and confine them to the canvas, screen or paper. Of the millions of images which pass through my mind, I can only hope to capture a few. This is my exquisitely frustrating race against time. This is my reason for living ... the only justification for my existence. Other than this thing that I can do, I am nothing more than a parasite, existing for the sake of existence. But this gift has been bestowed upon me! I believe that I have been given this ability for a purpose. So far, I believe this purpose is to provoke thought. To remind my fellow humans that we are unique, to piss people off if necessary, to make them strive to become something more than the people depicted in TV Sitcoms. We must not be allowed to believe that everything is okay with the world. We must not become complacent. We are destroying the planet for the purposes of personal greed and refusing to see that there are alternatives. We must think beyond the "BAG" that the media, which is controlled by insincere and greed driven interests, would have us believe is our "happy safe life style". My artwork, and the things that I write, make people look at the world differently.nnPASSION FOR ARTnnThe passion that I feel for my art is like the passion you might feel for water if you were dying of thirst. Imagine yourself in a hot dry desert landscape, devoid of all life. Only rocks and dust and the hot HOT sun beating down, burning and blistering your skin. You are drying up. There are no more tears or sweat, no moisture left. At that moment how passionate would you be about water? That is how passio