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Igor van Laere (1965) grew up in the Brabant village of Liempde where his parents instilled in him an interest in art and culture. He moved to Amsterdam to become a doctor like his father. In addition to his studies, he attended and practiced the arts; dance, theater, mime, musical with Jos Brink and Frank Sanders, sculpture and painting. For medical internships he traveled to faraway countries, always with a sketchbook to record impressions, encounters and colors.
After his studies, Igor traveled the streets, parks and nomadic areas of Amsterdam for fifteen years as a street doctor by bicycle. He roamed with the vagrants between poorhouses, bushes and squats. Man on the ground with each having a colorful story. He left Amsterdam to spend several years in Bandung helping to improve care for people with AIDS and heroin addiction in Java. Back in Holland, painting took off and the colors flowed onto the canvas.
Painting is something Igor does by feeling. Suddenly emotions, colors, encounters and memories surface. The path to the canvas follows automatically. With water, acrylic paint, powder, ecoline, crayons and pastels, colors flow from brushes and putty knives. Never does he know where he is going. Or where he arrives. Until the moment of release.
Beauty is in the movement.
Of voice, language, body, form and color.
My life gathers courage to move toward that which touches me.
To learn to feel; stand still, touch and let go.
I move toward the vulnerable, the powerful and the humorous.
Love is the calm movement of the hand.
Like butterflies in the stomach, I feel the urge to paint.
Colors, paint, knife and brush precede me.
As a street doctor making home visits to fellow homeless people.
Encounters stirred by loneliness and sadness.
Man on the bottom, each his own painting.
Vulnerable is the beauty of attention.
As a traveler backpacking through five continents.
It is the poverty and joy that touch me.
Man in color, in all her splendor.
Smell of life etched in my mind.
I paint because I feel; small and close.
No idea where I go and the curtain falls.
A celebration of standing still, touching and letting go.
Painting is moving toward love.
