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Thijs Segers (1996) works in a rural environment where art and life are closely intertwined. His painting practice grows out of direct observations of his surroundings: from the nature around the old farmhouse where he lives and the neighbours’ horses, to the rooms inside the house. This environment is not rendered literally, but gradually internalized. Segers paints associatively and in a calm, intuitive manner; impressions can linger in his unconscious for a long time before finding their way to the canvas.
Using homemade tempera – a paint made from egg and pigment – the artist builds his paintings in thin, transparent layers. This method of working consciously situates his practice within the art-historical tradition of tempera painting. It allows him to create scenes in which different worlds converge: interior and landscape, human and animal, memory and material. Motifs shift in meaning depending on time and context. The paintings often emerge in series that are unintentionally, yet inextricably, connected.
At Prospects, Segers presents a triptych that includes the painting Ademen, gij onzichtbaar gedicht! (2025). The work takes its title from a line in Sonnets to Orpheus (1923) by Rainer Maria Rilke. It depicts an indeterminate space: a table with a cloth becomes the stage on which different worlds touch. A hoof appears playfully; fragments of nature and interior motifs coexist, bound together by the layered, almost tangible skin of the paint. Segers explains: ‘My painting process feels like a form of inward absorption; in an incomprehensible way, everything comes together. In the end – when it coalesces into a single glance – that is when the work is finished.’
Written by: Kelly-ann van Steveninck