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Niek van der Plas
Nicolass (Niek) van der Plas was born in Leiden on 12 July 1954. He grew up as the oldest son in a family of four children in Katwijk, a fishing village where the sea and dunes are prominent features of the landscape.
Niek’s father was a house painter and decorator by profession, but his early working years were spent at sea as a fisherman. Art was one of several hobbies enjoyed by Van der Plas senior. As you would expect, growing up in an environment of craftspeople prompted Niek to take a vocational course at secondary school. Like his father, the future artist trained as a painter and decorator, and his brother followed suit a year later.
Encouraged by his father, Niek began to draw when he was only five or six years old. His particular talent became apparent when he won the first prize in a drawing competition at De Efteling, a theme park. The jury included none other than Anton Piek. In 1966 – when Niek was twelve years old, the Katwijk painter was nominated for a place at the Famous Artists School in the USA. And in 1967 the Dutch artist Rienk Belder wrote to Niek’s father to say: ‘I can see a strong inclination to fantasy in the work of your son, and a natural talent for working with a variety of materials.’
But Niek van der Plas was not destined to receive professional training as an artist. As a self-taught artist he has perfected his own technique, and was influenced strongly by his own responses to his surroundings. He can therefore be described as an autodidactic painter.
Among the earlier impressions absorbed by Niek, which he remembers with great pleasure, were the visits with his father to Masdag Museum in The Hague, where they both admired the Panorama Masdag. This magnificent painting, which features real sand in the foreground, made an overwhelming impression on the boy. It reminded him of wandering through the dunes near his home in Katwijk, where Niek often played as a child.
The influence of The Hague School has always been in evidence in the work of Niek van der Plas. So too have the sea, the beach and the dunes, the environment where he grew up. |
