B’Rock Orchestra’s House Artist frames in a bigger picture within our unique desire for connecting enthusiasm. From this desire comes the motivation to share experience, knowledge, and above all: the love of music with young professionals. Likewise with young visual artists where we collaborate with young talent every season.
Arthur Devisscher was born in Bruges. He lives in Ghent. Studied illustration at LUCA School of Arts (Ghent). During his last years studying psychology he returned to the pencil. Drawing provided a freedom that he did not find in his training at the time. At LUCA this freedom was only further encouraged.
When Arthur draws, he lets everything come to him, the stories unfold as he goes along. His bedroom is also his workplace, the fantasy world and the real one closely linked. Discipline is necessary when the bed is just a hop away.
Arthur likes to spend his time in nature, and despite the fact that this doesn’t rhyme in English as it does in Dutch, you can also see it in his work. Flowers and animals, equal characters. In his attic room, time crawls by like a caterpillar. The summer heat makes it feel like feverish dreams. The colorful compositions are made for you to lose yourself in them.
When Arthur looks at his drawings he finds his young self again, the pleasure in drawing is what drives him.
Arthur, can you say something about the freedom of drawing?
My psychology studies, that just wasn’t my thing, and I felt that while drawing I could distance myself, disappear completely. I am someone who thinks a lot and that stops only when I am working on something beautiful. Drawing, along with sports, is one of the few things that can turn off the thoughts.
I then started having doubts about the future; I had always gone off on what I found interesting, but not necessarily on what I was going to do. Drawing turned out to be exactly what I needed: less in my head, more in practice. I needed that freedom.
Do you play music while you work?
Usually yes, and then almost always music from when my father was young, I play his CDs. A lot of Beatles, Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, also Raymond van ‘t Groenewoud, also a lot of Belgian music, Deus, Hof van Commerce. And classical, for example also Water Music, coincidentally also the first project of B’Rock for which I made a work.
How would you describe your drawing style?
Before my training I typically drew illustratively: a black marker and then fill in with watercolor. I thought you had to match reality as closely as possible. Then at school I found my own way, something simpler, drawing like when I was young. Perspective doesn’t really make me happy, I’m looking for a style where I feel super free, where I can play.
And how do you actually work?
My drawings take time, especially for composition I need my full concentration. And I draw a lot, for example also in the evening when friends are visiting. The final stage with color I can do with a little less attention. In my work for B’Rock, I am guided by some key words, and I listen to the music. Either way I don’t get rushed, under pressure I can’t draw.
Where do you get your mysterious titles from?
I like that my work doesn’t fit the repertoire very clearly, that you can still imagine something. For Bach Dialogues, a program about death, I started very literally with a skeleton. But from there grows a composition, not necessarily narrative, but full of meaning and things that sometimes I also just find funny. The title comes at the end, often with a reference that adds something to the story in a not-so-obvious way.
