During the covid period, this duo brought painting, sculpture and music together to create an emotionally charged vision of man in all his melancholy, loneliness and vulnerability. The result: a unique collaboration and ditto artworks. Vivre dans la confusion, they call it themselves - an apt expression of how a confusing period nevertheless brought about a lot of beauty. Speaking: daughter Elisa, Liz to friends. She talks enthusiastically about this special collab.
Elisa: 'All his life, my father has been an artist, a painter and mainly a sculptor. Below his painting studio, he has his sculpture studio. I myself live above my parents' house, and the studios are across the street. So a collaboration was bound to happen at some point.' (Laughs.)
'Art was always a very natural presence in our home. I grew up with it, and daddy also often depicted me as a little girl. You can almost literally see me growing up in his works. Very special.' Inspiring too, although Elisa herself focuses more on music. 'I played classical violin for 15 years. Later, I started singing and making pop music. Music is still my biggest goal and dream and at the moment I am working hard on my record Popstar Zombie, which I will launch this summer under the name L.I.Z., which you pronounce as el-ai-zie.'
'When the pandemic broke out, dad and I suddenly had a lot of time and little to do. Everything fell silent. I then started writing more texts. I then linked images to them, the famous girls with dots. For me, they are a kind of muse, although there is also quite a bit of myself in them... A version of myself cast in muse form is perhaps the best description. There is a lot of colour, music and positivity woven into them, as well as some sadness. One day, dad saw my drawings and immediately said: 'Let's pop that in big in oil on canvas.' He still had oil paints lying around, and fortunately that kind of paint takes ages to dry out, so despite the scarcity during the covid period, we could get started right away.'
And that can safely be called a flying start. Father and daughter continued painting passionately for weeks. 'When we started, we indeed didn't stop for a while,' Elisa laughs. 'It was a fairly short, intensive, almost explosive collaboration. A very spontaneous inspiration, which I do love in life, by the way.'.’
'We dove into the studio, nailed canvases to the wall at home and the rest is history. First we transposed the girls' faces from small to large format and gradually Dad explained a lot to me. I can't imagine a better school of learning. Dad also convinced me to put myself over my fear. An incredibly exciting challenge.'
'We made everything at night. Dad always works when the city is asleep anyway, but so then I suddenly had to become a night animal too.' (Laughs.) 'But that suited me. You experience a kind of sense of freedom, like you can do whatever you want during those quiet, nocturnal hours a lot more.'
After the girls' faces, some of André's older works were also given a new look. 'Paintings like The poetess and Jef the cobbler are based on charcoal drawings made by daddy 40 years ago, when I wasn't even born yet. Only... He had never fixed them, so they gradually faded away. So I suggested re-releasing them, in my vision, with lots of colour and oil paint. The nice thing is that they are all portraits of people who really existed, like Sara who often returns as a model. She often posed for Daddy at the time.'
'Working with oil paint was not always obvious: it requires a specific technique, dries slowly.... I had never started working with it before, but fortunately I received an awful lot of tips and help from Dad during our collaboration. I am eternally grateful to him for that learning experience.'
'After about 70 paintings, we both felt it was done and we both returned to what was before - dad to his sculptures, me back to my music. Maybe we had worked together too intensely or too much for a while and needed to let it all sink in, but now it's really starting to sparkle back.'
'People sometimes tell me that the intensity of the colours combined with the look of the girls evokes a certain feeling in them. A kind of tristesse, surrounded by a cheerful colour pattern - that intrigues, confuses people and holds their attention. I think those are beautiful comliments, yes.'
When asked if Elisa has one favourite work, she hesitates. 'Picking one work? That's almost impossible! Every work has something for me. Every night when we went on an adventure together was so special. For me, it's about all the works together, and the experience and emotions I was able to share with dad on that road.'
To conclude: what was it really like working together? 'It definitely strengthened our father-daughter bond. That we sometimes bickered about colours - I want that, no, I want that like that - but in the end we always ended up with a good feeling, I think that's so cool. It was an incredibly fun and educational process that we look back on with warm hearts. Now our 'girls' are ready to fly out, and I hope that that positive feeling resonates and resonates with the people they will eventually end up with.'
Discover the artworks of EVA and of André Verbruggen via this link on Objects:
