Marcus van Soest and I were having a good time chatting this morning using Skype in Video/Audio mode. We’re working on having a 3 way conversation over the next week and including Steve Oatway, in Australia – which means I’ll be at 8 AM, my time, Marcus van Soest in The Hague, 5 hours later, and Steve in Australia at 11 PM in the evening.

The Skype connection, when it worked, was pretty cool and FREE. It was like I was in the cafe sitting right across from Marcus in the Hague. We spent about an hour like this.

I did an earlier interview with Marcus van Soest last month Hymn to Insanity with Marcus van Soest and we’ve chatted several times since – found out a lot about life in the Hague and European art as it’s happening now.  Here’s part of the conversations I’ve had with Marcus.  Also, Marcus van Soest has placed a YouTube Video on his site that focuses on the topic of this interview – located here.

Marcus van Soest – 2006

Marshall: Marcus, you actually appear to have your own “broadcast” channel for your art (powerpainter.org). I see you have a community of users, including some in Brooklyn, NY, that use PowerPainter.org. How many users to you have?

Marcus: We have around 50 artists currently (there was some technical issues with powerpainter.org over the last couple of months – hopefully resolved now).

Marshall: Do you use Powerpainter to coordinate any activities between the members? Talk a little more about what a fully functional Powerpainter.org allows the artist to do? And why is Powerpainter.org site nicknamed “Square Wheels Drive Better!”?

Marcus:  Why wouldn’t a writer work with a painter? or a cook with a writer to create a cooking book or something.  That’s the idea behind it, we want Powerpainter.org to become a platform for intercultural and interdisciplinary cross-breeding..There’s no such thing as concurrence on PP.

In the new version we want artists to start weblogs on sites like Blogger or any other side which has RSS feeds we can implement, my main technical man Rein Velt will install the Flickr module so we can easily produce galleries for the members. Getting to why Powerpainter.org is nicknamed “Square Wheels Drive Better!” -Why should wheels be round.

.. Imagine a Ferrari Testarossa with square wheels for the most rich and decadent amongst us, how could you show your wealth better? They don’t in 3 D but they do in 6D and

Marshall: How has running Powerpainter.org affected your painting?

Marcus: Well first it ate a lot of my time, but that is what it is with ideals, one should sacrifice some time once in a while… a couple of features include a blog anyone member can post to and  there’s the possibility to link posts to geographical positions –  this it can become a great tool for travel weblogs or moving projects…when the person has a blog somewhere else we syndicate it and that gives traffic to members who post and Powerpainter.org.

The geographical module runs on Google Maps, it would be possible to create regional Art news and gives direction where to find an exhibition…

Marshall: Interesting – so artists will be able to use your platform to create journals of their travels, communicate with other member artists and aggregated feeds? Is Powerpainter.org a support group for other artists and can you give me an example of when it’s been that for someone else?

Marcus: The idea came from being lonely, as a painter you are alone in your studio, you won’t want others to be there when you work, it’s pure solo, but half of me is artist, but human too with human needs, like having a social life and being able to meet people who know what they’re talking about….

We are Art-lovers and an Artists 4 Artists network PP is a web-based musketeer organisation, for those with one thing in common: Love for Art and appreciation for those who struggle to master their Art and believe in their talents even in times when nobody else does, for those who make a difference and follow their own course in the process of creation.

Working on Powerpainter.org and my painting – it’s a complementation, two hands are washing each other, it’s fun to do and like this it’s possible to help others too and by forming this network attracting enough traffic to personal stuff too…the more people cooperate the more traffic we generate and that’s cumulative I think..

Marshall: I’m just curious if yours is the only service of it’s kind – unique – or is it modeled after something that already existed?

Marcus: I don’t say we are an unique service, in fact it’s a free service and run by enthusiasts.

Marshall: What are you working on right now? What is the longest time you have spent on a painting?

Marcus: I am busy on an assignment for a lawyer from Antwerp/ Belgium, a one meter by one meter piece which deals with the complexity of the World of Fiscal Justice, I know that sounds difficult, but I feel the guy came to the right person for this one… Five smaller works and two big ones …

I always work on more paintings… I take all time needed to get to what we call “high definition”.  I have spent a year or two on some paintings, i think the ones I am working at right now come close… This one took me 8 months it’s two by two meters and it’s called “The Quest for the golden Egg” (see below)

 

Marshall: I noticed you reference your Chelsea Gallery in the YouTube video you posted about instant communication between artists.

Marcus: Well I had these two shows at Monkdogz Urban Art in March / April and in September, i like their initiative a lot, they’re approach is different than other galleries. And they gave me a chance to explore New York , to me a great adventure that I embrace with all I got…

END of Interview with Marcus van Soest.

In Summary – Marcus has a  YouTube Video about how he use PowerPainter.org as a communications method posted at his site and has a lot of information about Art in the Hague that I think a lot of art enthusiasts would like to know about

.. I hope he writes more about the King Kong Gallery and all the goings on the Hague with the underground Art Movement there … I will certainly encourage him to do so.

I have been working on an interview with Marcus van Soest who has created an Online Video of one of his paintings - Hymn to Insanity.  I can’t embed the video here, but I will put it on WebMetricsguru.com. 

powerpainter: Hi Marshall, are you there?  I uploaded the first videoclip, the one i shot today.  This afternoon we filmed, my friend HZLZ did the camera, i did the editing.  It starts with the powerpainter videoblog scenes then you see me in my studio explaining about the statement, ten comes the journey over the painting 1 minute then the 4 minutes explanation by moi…

me: great.  You have a lot of current events going on – are they still being worked out? – What resolution does the painting have about these events?

powerpainter: I don’t understand your question, I am a bloody Dutchman…

me: This is a story happening right now – how do you see it ending?

powerpainter: Yeah that’s a good solution… Well, hopefully the problems will be solved, I am more worried about global change of climates, we should direct our energy to that issue instead of all this money devouring warmongers..

Painting is like dreaming without sleeping, the painting enfolds before the inner eye. As a painter i am also an activist, trying to show my bizarre vision to the world, in search for universal language…

me: Yours is a different case- knowing what and why your painting can help the viewer get more out of looking at it – though your paintings stand on their own and actually don’t need an explanation. Still, an explanation is helpful.

powerpainter: Normally you hang a painting and you’re not there to explain about it, the painting has to tell the story by itself and it does… that’s what I call a good piece of communication.

me: OK, that’s cool. I might try posting the movie tonight with a couple of notes from our chat and then we;ll do a fuller interview next week…how does that sound?

powerpainter: It’s an old hermetic view, about up and down, inside and outside, solve the inner conflict so the World conflict ceases to exist..

me: Have you studied any philosophies?

powerpainter: Well I used to read a lot of books about the esoteric, the Occult, Jungian Psychology, Man and his Symbols, I studied Hieronymus Bosch, the old master, an alchemist and savant.  Leadbeater, Ouspensky, Gurdjieff, Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner and more… now I quit reading heavy stuff, try to keep life simple, I study my demons…

me: right – we have enough to deal with.

powerpainter: okee I go now, I am quite tired, need to relaxxxxx… bye
That was my interview with Marcus van Soest today.

I posted the video of Hymn to Insanity  at Webmetricsguru, btw, called the post ‘Hymn to Insanity’ and my remote communication with the Dutch Painter Marcus van Soest  and there’s also a short post about our communication at SmartMobs.

 

No sooner do I write about an artist in Holland who has a show in NYC, Marcus van Soest, than I get an email and salutation from him over the internet via real time video.

Aside from liking Marcus’s paintings, which I do, he is a new breed of artist that knows how to use the Internet to foster online communication, totally eliminating distance.  I feel like Marcus van Soest just became a friend of mine – and we haven’t even met yet (I missed his opening last week at MonkDogz).

Marcus does something that I have heard about and seen hotels do (an online cam of his studio) but not an artist.  I think that’s a great idea to foster communication and fans!   Think about it…what it the Internet if not “instant” ….. things need to happen fast, communication is “instant” and sales are often “impulse”.   Communities can form quickly and you can find out you have fans and followings from all over the world….if you know how to foster use the medium, partake in it.

I was talking to Amy Crehore about just that, the other day.  When Amy tried to explain her large swings in traffic and internet fans to some fellow artists she exhibits with …they did not understand …. they could not follow.   The internet changed EVERYTHING…and many people haven’t realized it yet….but luckly for those that do, like Marcus van Soest and Amy Crehore.