Wim Bakker

Painting is a late vocation for Wim Bakker (Marsum 1969). After a successful career in business and top sport, the passion for painting came as a surprise. With the same drive with which he had shaped his previous career, new steps were taken to master this unknown field. Perhaps the confrontation with the work of Sam Drukker was the real reason for making the switch to being an artist, so the decision was made to study at the Wackers Academy in the first place.

After this thorough introduction, Bakker opted for a foreign follow-up with masterclasses in Spain, Italy and Sweden. In the space of a few years, drawing and painting has become second nature to him. With the eye of an analyst, his subjects are studied down to the smallest detail and then integrated into a larger composition. There is little room for chance in his paintings. However, the sketchbooks betray that there is almost always a moment of spontaneity in which the first thoughts and feelings are committed to paper. The drawing from a model and the notes made of the great classical examples while sketching ensure that the artist is well aware of the place he occupies in the tradition. That same consciousness then gives the freedom to shape one's own.

Critical look

Wim Bakker has not been put off by either the big names or the obvious comparison. His sketchbooks reveal that he studied the classical examples with great fascination. Small virtuoso sketches show a cross-section of the collections he has visited and occasionally a milestone like Velazquez' pensive Mars, in a reduced version, ends up on a panel. The will to become as good as this characterizes the mentality of the artist. The aspiration is to reach the top and failure is less bad than not trying… and no one is more critical than the artist himself.

This critical view of his own work is clearly present in the self-portraits. The small series, whether fragmentary or not, of self-portraits not only shows how high the technical requirements are, but also shows the merciless look on one's own face. Close to the mirror and close to the skin, a world is created in which nothing escapes the eye. Very precise observation and recording come together on a few square centimeters. You could just end up in the world of miniature painting, but the wonderful thing is that there is rather a sensation of monumentality. Self-portraits usually tell the most about an artist, while the artist often wants to say the least about those self-portraits. Talking in the studio with Wim Bakker, the stories about the (portrait) models come loose quite easily. They provide a colorful picture of the daily practice of the portraitist and could easily be written down in the context of another book. It is different with the self-portraits. The conversation is about technique or about satisfaction with the result, but rarely about recognition. It is not until the somewhat larger painting on canvas that Bakker pauses and raises his fist to his mouth in the characteristic pose. “I only realized that after painting this self-portrait,” he says, “that I often look like that”. Observation and interpretation are already anticipating, perhaps to the next self-portrait.