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Tymon de Laat finds the fuel for his art in the streets of his hometown, Rotterdam, to which he feels indebted, as well as Latin American culture. This influence is the result of a one-year trip to Latin America that Tymon de Laat undertook shortly after graduating from the Willem de Kooning Academy. With little money but rich in ideas, the artist had many encounters, which were enough to durably impact his restless mind, and totally shift his vision of the world and his relationship to visual art.

Today, each of his creations (mostly canvas paintings and murals) bears the mark of this culturally mixed approach, since this Dutch artist paints portraits of people he has photographed during his trips. He thus turns these anonymous people into heroes of everyday life, or at least into the symbol of wealth of multiculturalism, represented in a deliberately magnified way through swirling patterns and bright colours. What captures the viewer’s attention is less the individual person than the beauty of their culture painted in places least expected, less the soft benevolence in their eyes than Tymon de Laat’s quickly identifiable style. You can find, for example, the portrait of a young Laotian girl in the streets of Carlisle in North England: or a Cuban tobacco farmer painted in the Straat Museum in Amsterdam. The artists sensitivity, sense of storytelling and detail bring his work beyond representation towards emotion.

Words by Maxime Delcourt for GraffitiArt Magazine

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