Koelpiet

I made this painting this morning. It's a coal-miner, a "Koelpiet" as they were called in our local dialect. It's an image from my youth. When I was young one of the largest Dutch coal mines was located literally around the corner: the "staatsmijn Emma". I grew up under it's smoke, and all of the inhabitants of Amstenrade and Hoensbroek worked at the coalmine one way or the other. So images like these were quite common back in those days.

The mines were closed down in the early 70s, and the government back then made a very thorough job of erasing all reminders of the mines. It didn't fit in their clean modern image of the future I guess. This painting will be shown at an group exhibition in Landgraaf, early May. 

I also show two early stages of the painting process. I prepared the wood MDF panel (12mm thick, about 60x70cm) withtwo layers of Gesso, and some tile mortar. Then I used transparent layers of paint, using only the colours Burnt Umber, Prussian blue, Ochre and alizarin red. And white. No black.