Over the past 20 years, as both a drawer/painter and illustrator, Sebastiaan has been exploring the visual and narrative boundaries within the field of editorial and picture book illustration. Always looking for a personal and fictional universe within an applied context, often hand in hand with literature & poetry. Loneliness, folktales, wanderlust and bewildering nature are contents/interests that often came to the surface during his artistic practice. The pictures visually claimed a dominant role and translated the stories or articles through subtle humor and criticism. When working for magazines, Sebastiaan commented on the articles through surrealistic combinations in his imagery. Specific examples of this were a teddy bear with a Kalashnikov in a tanker or Hansel and Gretel who are locked up in a bank as a 'gingerbread house'. Consciously playing with the boundaries between recognizability and confusion, he wanted to raise questions with this work rather than literally answering or translating them visually. Through experimentation, technical variation and working in different contexts (drawing, painting, illustration, ceramics), he is able to broaden his field of work as an illustration artist during the first years and more recently channeled this into a more autonomous practice as a drawer and painter.

Oil paintings, black and white ink drawings and watercolors are the main part of his visual research. Sebastiaan strives to evoke a painful light-heartedness in an almost childish, improvised and messy world. A 'canvas' inhabited by errant figures who seem to be detached from their surroundings and whose purpose is not clearly defined. The somehow archaic and introverted figures often wear folkloric or clownish attributes as weapons for their futile lives. Dreamy, anthropomorphic figures who seem to be looking for connection, isolated in an uncertain, uncanny world.

Identity and unrest impose themselves in a search for a metaphor for vulnerable human nature. Ephemeral constructions that give a false sense of protection from a prevailing (human) wilderness and chaos. Rickety constructions, isolated fragments of degraded or cultivated nature and intense colors full of structure and nuance to break free from the realistic rendering to reinforce the strangeness. Elements that emerge and develop sporadically and independently of chronology as separate, narrative elements in his figurative paintings and illustrations.

It is not an obsession for destruction or decay that fuels his creativity, but a reflection on vulnerability and loneliness in a world under pressure. Opposites and equals compete for his attention, always with humor as the ultimate shield and as catharsis in this life and his practice.

You can also follow him via instagram.