Wouter Stips: ‘I need to continue surprising myself’

- Wouter Stips (1944) -

‘We dreamed up a house full of the unique and beautiful.’ These words rolled from the pen of Wouter Stips. They form the theme of this book, which has been drawn from Stips’ colourful paintings and small poetic philosophical thoughts. Leolux has worked closely with artists for many years, but never before has one of them influenced the design of the Leolux annual. However, Stips’ view reaches further than the art of painting, following years of exploring almost every creative discipline. He is a television programme maker, poet, painter and designer. His work communicates in words and pictures. Here we talk with this multi-faceted man about his method of work and ‘the child in the man’.

The spontaneous, uncomplicated creative ability that we have as a child fades with the years and Wouter Stips thinks this is a shame: ‘As soon as we arrive at school, our playground of creativity decreases. We learn to be rational. Children are instructed to take a careful look at the original when drawing something. The development of your own dream world, your fantasy, stops.’ It makes everything boring, the life has gone out of it, Stip believes, and therefore he opposes it. ‘I am always looking for the child inside me. If I draw a laughing horse, I don’t consider it important how the horse looks, only how it is laughing. Whether you can see that it is a horse is irrelevant to me. If it looks like a dog, I simply write beside it that it is a horse’.

He calls his current project, ‘Sweet child in Man’, ‘a friendly, accessible art book for children and adults.’ It is full of stories, paintings and poetic philosophical thoughts, inspired by talks he has held with children in developing countries. From the proceeds of this book, hundreds of libraries will be built in Indonesia, enabling children to borrow books at low costs. And, of course, his new book will also be translated into Indonesian and available in all the little libraries. Is Stips’ art universal? Wouter: ‘Yes. There were people in high places that doubted this. In order to prove it, I confronted children in Indonesia with my work and books. Now, they understand it in great detail, even without any prior cultural knowledge.

Good, honest art is universal. It’s the adults that are conditioned.’ Stips’ basic idea for the Leolux annual flowed from this project. ‘I had a poem: the child in me believes in a wonder / and dreams of a world, full of the unique and beautiful. I found that extremely fitting for creating a living environment, as Leolux does.’ He sees lots of areas of overlap in the making of furniture and art. ‘Creativity forms the basis of good furniture. You must fantasise about beauty and at the same time have both feet firmly on the ground in order to make your dreams come true. People are able to fantasise, that’s what makes us different from animals. We, like them, wish to survive, but then we wish to do it as comfortably as possible. That’s why we adapt our environment to our individual taste; a beautiful house, with nice things in it - art and furniture. It is the creation of your own world.’

Those talking to Stips for a while notice that he is at home in almost every field - painting, poetry, internet, music, jewellery or sculptures. Stips is active there. And, in the past he used to work as a maker of television programmes. Is he a ‘uomo universalis’, à la Da Vinci? ‘No, absolutely not,’ he laughs off the comparison. ‘Da Vinci worked out everything in detail. He was also an inventor and technician. I refuse to go into the technicalities. For television I have, for example, never wanted to be able to edit. In my ignorance I was able to say ‘I want that to be blue. Think of a solution.’ And a technician would go into that for me. In this way, teamwork was created, an added value.’
As with many creative people, his head is full of ideas. It is not possible to switch this off. He is very active designing art furniture for Leolux. ‘I have this drive and I must do things. My agenda is always full and if not I give myself assignments. I only managed to put a reasonable stop to it all last summer on holiday in Indonesia with my family. However, he is unable to stop completely, as he admits a little later when he displays the bracelet he designed: ‘I discovered a silversmith and I had him make this bracelet. Fortunately I was able to persuade my wife. She found the white stone that is worked into it on the beach.’ And in the end this has become another project, because in the meantime Stips has plans to have this Indonesian silversmith make a complete series of jewellery designs.

If someone is so wrapped up in his work, you might ask yourself whether he is ever going to stop. Even Stips can’t imagine doing so: ‘You’re an artist for life unless you are physically no longer able. But in principle you can continue up until you are almost in your grave.’ Resolutely he says: ‘I need to continue surprising myself; I will never be able to work within the confines of fixed concepts as many artists do. If I know in advance what I’m to make, it never turns out. The moment that you work outside yourself, when you no longer think, that is beautiful and extraordinary. That is inspiration.’ ‘You can paint your whole life’

Wouter Stips, biography:
Following his training at the Art Academy (Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten) in Rotterdam, Stips became active with different forms of expressive and applied art. He exhibited graphic art and paintings, made animation films in Prague, puppets in Paris, wrote and directed theatre shows and published books and plays. From 1980, he applied himself to writing, directing and developing television programmes, including drama and comedy series. In 1995, following 15 intensive years in television, Stips returned to an old passion of his, painting freely. Wouter Stips lives and works in Hilversum.

http://www.wouterstips.nl/

Wouter Stips’ work is also for sale in the Leolux-Design-Center and visitors center Via Creandi.