XL acrylic paintings of Jeff Bridges, Vincent Cassell, Henry Fonda, James Franco and Jason statham on canvas (250cm tall) - see more at: firlefijn.com
Filip Firlefijn was born in Belgium in 1979, and graduated in 2005 with a Master in Germanic Philology (specialization: English and Dutch literature). Filip has always been fascinated by portraiture, both with the needed skill as with the different ways of creating an appealing result (from cartoons to realism). Yet the nude and Renaissance painting have inspired him as well. He created a large format Medusa in 2004 and many nude sketches and paintings to this day. „With me“ is his latest nude painting. On his website - firlefijn.com - you will also learn that he has a passion for photography, writing and filmmaking.
His portfolio mostly contains portraits of famous people, with a humorous touch, people who can get noticed within the public domain and can move within our collective cultural memory. We do not just live at work or at a rural restaurant in our spare time anymore. The impressionists were great, but we also live in wider cultural construct that has grown in our collective mind. The public domain has become a matured concept within that construct and fame has become one of ist elements that is often fetishized. Warhole picked up on that very avidly. Filip now is shining a light on the construct as well while adding some humor. He has even tried to look at it with an optimistic and perhaps even inspiring eye (yet without losing his artistic and intellectualizing distance).
Filip Firlefijn sees depictions of iconic people in the public domain and uses them to make an art form that deals with the subject of public domain and what that is, how it is evolving. The public domain has become a vaster area as people have gained more time to gain more knowledge. The media has helped since Andy Warhol's days. Still, mostly only some of the people depicted are known to many. The term "public domain" already carried that little ironic element of the unknown as it came to be. Maybe it is not pop art any more but public domain art in a way. Some irony has been added in that sense. His art tries to reflect that as in its plentitude, style and identity.
Filip has drawn more than 1,000 A4 portraits and painted more than 120 large acrylic portraits. Most paintings are based on his sketches, mostly ballpoint sketches, or “quick ballpoint scribbles” as he likes to call them, “a good way to exercise or to get a quicker eye and hand”.
As a portrait artist he was inspired by the whole history of portrait art, of course, but really influenced only by artists like Andy Warhol, Roy Liechtenstein, Chuck Close and Cy Twombly. The pop-art side (large scale “replica”) comes from Warhol and Lichtenstein. He claims Chuck Close confirmed his idea of portraits in large format and looking at what Cy Twombly had done on large pieces of canvas convinced him to paint some monochrome paintings in a “wilder” fashion.
That monochrome magenta also refers to the early Belgian comics that were often printed with just one color (often blue, green or magenta). Both the sketches and a large part of the paintings are monochrome, but the color portraits actually also clearly hold a reference to the world of comics, just as the monochrome paintings, which makes Filip Firlefijn’s work a bit more Belgian than the layman would gather.
Belgium really has got a rich history of comic books. Filip’s portraits have risen from that background.
« One of the first things I tried as an artist was to draw self portraits with a pencil. Being successful at that empowered me to continue, to add expressions, color and style. »
Working mostly with acrylic paint and employing elements of impressionism, realism, pop art, and cartoonism, his portraits are colorful, lively images of iconic people and characters. He has described his artwork as a study of human nature and expression. His paintings, are fun, bold, colorful pieces that add statement and flair into any room in which they appear.
