Freddy Van Dyck has distilled a style very much his own from the work of his uncle, Albert Van Dyck, with his predilection for children, from his admiration for Rembrandt’s play of light and shade, and also from the expressionism of Permeke. He often uses bold brushstrokes to mark the contrast between light and shade. He is an honest artist who speaks to everyone’s heart in a flamboyant and virtuosic style. His figures are truly flesh and blood.

As Freddy Van Dyck became older, he used more colour in his depictions. To bring variation to his colouristic process, the artist turned towards the technique of collage, where colourful scraps of paper became abstract additions to his compositions. His love of music is expressed in ‘Violin Composition’ and ‘Violin Symphony’.

Before I start, a painting begins to grow inside my mind, for several days at a stretch. Once I start to develop those ideas, the process unfolds quite swiftly. First I make a charcoal drawing and then I set the tone, because I want to neutralize the predominant white as quickly as possible. After that, depending on what the painting calls for, I work with oils or water colours, wax crayons or Chinese ink. I keep touching up the composition with synthetic charcoal in order to obtain “blacker” effects. Probably the hardest part is knowing when to stop so that the painting does not become “overworked”.