Dutch-born artist Henk Pander was introduced to the world of art at an early age by his artist father who taught Henk the classically Dutch forms of landscape painting, still life, and portraiture. Now, faraway in another country, albeit still a rainy one, 45-year-old Henk Pander’s work is still shaped by landscape, still life, and portraiture, but he has made them very much his own. After five years’ study at Amsterdam’s State Academy for Visual Arts, capped by the silver medal in painting in the 1961 Prix de Rome, Henk could have been an artist supported by his government probably for the rest of his life. Instead, Pander came to Portland in 1965, where his transition into the American art world began with two years’ teaching at the Portland Art Association’s Museum Art School. Coming from the politicized atmosphere of the Dutch Provo anarchists led Henk naturally to an affinity for activism in Portland during the ’60s the 70s. Henk Pander posters, lined up side by side, could tell a subAn Artist of Two Worlds By Penny Allen Photo by Eric Edwards cultural history, but they are far from being the whole story of Henk Pander. Since 1969, Henk has worked extensively in set design with Storefront Theatre. His drawings and paintings have been shown in 33 solo exhibitions and 42 group shows, both in Europe and the United States. The Portland Art Museum has honored Henk with a major exhibition of 24 large ink drawings, through Oct. 10. The drawings are Pander’s most direct work, the form through which he approaches new ideas, new inspirations, new techniques. They are intense, exciting, and very personal. Pander: For a long time, people have just thought that I made weird pictures. The Oregonian even called my work ‘scurrilous’ once. I always hoped they’d notice there was more to it than that. In the past, people have mostly gotten involved in the subjective aspects of the work — the strangeness, the bizarreness, what they thought were drug-induced visions, while actually I have a very rational way of going about my work. [Pander notices a footprint on a photograph he has placed on the floor of his studio.] Look! Somebody walked on this! There’s a footprint on it! One of my kids. Clinton St. Quarterly: They’re very irreverent. Pander: Of course! They say, “Henk! Don’t leave your things lying around on the floor!” CSQ: Do you feel you’ve been inadequately dealt with as an artist in Portland? Pander: At times it has been disappointing. I don’t really feel about my work the way a lot of people talk about it. People sometimes say, “I like your pictures but I couldn’t live with them ... they’re too disturbing.” It never really occurs to me. At best, sometimes I think they’re funny. People are stuffy. I think that the kind of drawings I do are not really done around the Northwest, so they appear very unusual — my vocabulary, or the kind of lines I use, or the subjects I like. My work has a European quality. It is different from the work of people who have grown up here, even though I feel like I participate very much in the life here. Actually my drawings are probably not distinctly European anymore either. CSQ: They’re dualistic. How do you measure your changes? Pander: Well, it shows up the most when I do slide shows for people back in Holland, and they can see how my work has separated itself from what I used to do there. And it’s very different from what artists in my peer group are now doing. Storefront Theatre was a very important influence here. At the time I was most involved in Storefront, I thought it was sort of a universal phenomenon, going on everywhere. But when I did a presentation about Storefront..Theatre in Holland ... the initiatives that were taken, the kind of shows we did, it was obvious that these were the sorts of things that people in Amsterdam could only fantasize about. I discovered that Storefront was really uniquely tied into Portland culture. CSQ: Finding those people to talk to was really crucial for the way you evolved in Portland, wasn’t it? So you would feel less isolated.... Pander: Yeah, but I still feel isolated, especially since I’m not really involved anymore in the theater. I’ve become more preoccupied with my work as a painter and I do feel a strong sense of isolation, a bit alien. But I think most artists have a sense of isolation. I miss my peers sometimes, but I’m not so sure now that, even if I were to return to Europe to stay, I would find a peer group. Once you’ve gone, you’ve gone. But I’ve had a gnawing sense of homesickness for a year or so. ' CSQ: Would you go back? Pander: I’m not sure I would actually move back, but sometimes I have the feeling a radical change in my life would be exciting. Instead of waiting for some picture to sell, doing something real drastic. If something came up to pull me over to Europe, or pull me to the East Coast, I would be open to it. I’ve always been sort of sitting on the edge of my chair. But when I visit Europe, I satisfy my need, and then I feel melancholy, so I’m glad to return to the States. CSQ: Why does Europe make you melancholy? Pander: I think it’s the expatriate syndrome. I’ve lived for a long time now in the States and my kids are here and I’ve built somewhat of a career out here ... the best years of my life have been spent in Portland. I think in American. When I go to Holland I speak Dutch, get rid -of my American accent, and I pick up the conversation where it was in 1965 when I left. And then it’s as if I’ve never left and the United States is some kind of a dream. After awhile I get confused. And people in Holland seem a bit depressed, a bit frightened.. .. CSQ: Yes, when I was in Holland I encountered incredible fear that they'll end up sacrificed in a war between the U.S. and Russia. Pander: And with good reason. You can walk through Amsterdam and get the sense that although everything is festive and wonderful and beautiful, it could suddenly turn, and there would be nowhere to go ... that kind of quality in the air. And of course these sorts of things have already happened several times in this century. CSQ: Do you think that you’re reinfluenced by that Dutch/Germanic sort of angst each time you go back, that it shows up in your drawings? Pander: Yes, I always am aware that things may change, that something may happen ... even though the Pacific Northwest is close to paradise: mild climate, extremely beautiful, far removed from the violent upheavals going on in the world. I actually live in a kind of fantasy world, a reality which doesn’t come out of Portland very much. It’s made up of things I read, the things I think about. CSQ: Sometimes it seems your work is about the distance between two realities. Pander: Yeah, and sometimes I do something like, say, View of Haarlem [an oil in the tradition of the great Dutch painters, collection of the Portland Art Museum], and it’s based on memories. I called my brother yesterday, and I haven’t talked to him for three years, and memories flood back. Holland informs me, but I bet if I moved back to Holland, my work would suddenly involve memories of Portland. In fact, when I moved back to Amsterdam for a short while in 1968, the first thing I did was paint a view of Mt. Hood in my bleak studio. Oftentimes I mix up imagery or blend it ... in A View of Haarlem, the sky is from New Mexico, Santa Fe. CSQ: That’s why it’s such a deep blue? Pander: Yeah! Not the Dutch sky at all. I like to pull things together. CSQ: At a certain point, didn’t you tune into whatever Victorian decadence there was left in Portland? Pander: Yes, but not so much anymore. For awhile, especially around Storefront, there was always a fascination with that sort of thing, a romantic preoccupation to contrast with the tall buildings. A sort of search for romance. And I was around Storefront, and I’ve always drawn the people around me. When I came here in 1965, I was an expressionistic painter, influenced by German expressionism. Now, both here and in Europe, there’s a whole movement of neo-expressionists, linking back to the ’20s. But I no longer do that, even though there is still an expressionistic element in my work.... CSQ: Like the attenuated emotions? Pander: Yes, but you could say my work now is surrealistic, because it comes out of the subconscious ... contemplative, whereas expressionism comes out much more violently, with a lack of restraint. My work actually has a great deal of restraint to it. I found that an unrestrained sort of “attacking the canvas” led to really bad and ugly paintings. I wanted refinement while retaining the intensity. CSQ: What about your dead birds, your skulls? Are they fust formalistic elements? Pander: I have a skull collection. It “I think my interest in having people participate in a piece came from my involvement with theater. I like the idea of an emotional interchange with what is essentially just ink or paint, so that you find yourself engaged with something that’s not really there at all, something made up.” probably comes from growing up around Haarlem. My father was an artist, you know, and there were a bunch of painters there who were morbid, painting skulls and such, so as a child I was really kind of taken by that. I’ve carried it with me. I think skulls are about life, not death. I’m also interested in biology. Skulls are remnants of life. They’re life forms. I’m not trying to make some sort of statement about death. I draw the things that are around me. CSQ: Where did Dimensions come from? [the 1977 drawing which combines one- and two-dimensional elements floating in an illusory room, curtains flapping at the window, through which can be Seen grids receding into the distance which is itself occupied by an enormous lunar landscape] Pander: Well, I’ve always painted skies. I’ve always been interested in things floating in space, whether it was clouds or planes or planets. And with the American space program, when those other planets were revealed as being actual landscapes ... I was very excited. In the last decade, landscapes that were only fantasized about have suddenly been exposed — close-up views of the moon, photographs of Venus. So I’ve followed the literature, and I’ve become more acutely interested and thought I should introduce this extended landscape into my work. So the moon became a real landscape, with all its craters. I know the names of the craters. I’ve made it my own. I’ve objectified the moon so as to make it clearer to me. CSQ: Would you like to go into Clinton St. Quarterly 19
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