sinds 26 -10 -07

Biography 

(klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie)

Johan van Breukelen (1952), creative artist, designer, mental trainer and coach. Since 1985 he has been associated with the Stichting Mannenwerk (Working with Men Foundation)and has more than twenty years experience of training and leading groups working with self awareness; creative personal development and living in the ‘here and now’.

Besides this, since 1991, he has worked as an instructor dealing with the results of traumatic experiences and as a coach in various projects concerning the ways companies can handle change and reorganization.

He originally began his artistic work as a set designer and lighting technician with various theatre groups. Since 1989 he has concentrated on producing two dimensional work by ‘drawing with light’. He creates photographs and photographic works. The latter are a combination of photography and mixed medium, paint and drawing techniques. The work is pure photography without digital enhancement.

The photos and photo works are distinguished by their interaction of light, darkness and reflection. In his work he aims to show elements of male sexual energy, strength and vulnerability. Van Breukelen is fascinated by the shadow side of (homo) sexuality with all its distorted aspects. At the same time, he shows the innocence and beauty of desire and the quest for contact and commitment.

Since 1991, the photo works of Johan van Breukelen are vital to the image of the Stichting Mannenwerk (Working with men Foundation), which concentrates on the personal development and emancipation of men. Alongside this work, Johan designs for the Trio Thijs; a musical trio for which he also writes lyrics and text.

Johan van Breukelen’s photography projects were previously exhibited in the Melkweg Galerie, Galerie 1718  and Galerie Faubourg in Amsterdam; Galerie Westzijde, Broers, ’t Hoogt, Brandweerkazerne, Galerie Moira in Utrecht; Galerie de Lelie, R*ART gallery in Antwerp and the Galerie Janssen in Berlin.   

Background information:

My ‘artistic calling’ didn’t just begin from the moment that I started publishing, exhibiting and selling my work. It already existed during many earlier moments in my life, long before it became ‘official’. As far as I’m concerned, an artistic calling emerges mainly from looking at things in a ‘different’ way and thus experiencing them in a ‘different’ and more intense manner. It is then expressed by what you do with that experience and how you give shape and form to the intensity. In a short summary of my own personal development, I’d like to describe a few moments during my life which have influenced the directions and paths I’ve chosen.

I was born in 1952, as the youngest in a working class family of eight children: an ‘afterthought’ in a family where all the rules of how you behaved towards each other had already been set. It was a large, intense and chaotic family in a far too small house. I could rarely connect with the lives of my older brothers and sisters. Part of me was inclined to play the fool to attract attention but another part retreated into myself and created my own fantasy world.

As a four year old lying in bed, I could already see the most wonderful shadows and lights passing over my bedroom walls. It was an enchanted world of light and dark that swept me away into a place where I could have all sorts of adventures and at the same time feel safe and at home.

A neighbourhood girl was a teacher. She drew wonderful fantasy characters and princesses in my sisters’ poetry books. I could never understand how someone I knew and who lived so close by, could do that so beautifully. On my fifth birthday she gave me my first ‘Caran D’ache’ colouring box and I mainly drew shapes, which I coloured in.

At the beginning of the Sixties, we got a TV. There were often German comedy, dance and singing shows to watch. I was fascinated by the light and the camera movement. I was only nine but by the shadows, I could see how many lights were trained on a performer. The Kessler Twins were popular then, as well as glamorous female singers but I only had eyes for their six shadows!

When I was twelve, I wrote a play at school, with myself as ‘Black Harry’ in the leading role. On the self-made poster, I’d portrayed myself as a masked villain in black tights and a black hat. Thanks to its ‘overwhelming success’, we were able to perform it for several classes.

Even as a child, I’d quickly realised that I was ‘different’. All the things which seemed so obvious to everyone around were not obvious to me! I knew for sure that I didn’t want to get married, or have children, or join the army, or work for the same (or any) boss for twenty years. Unfortunately I didn’t have any role-models around me to show how it could be done differently. I already knew in primary school that I was attracted to boys. The only gay man in the village was the chairman of the Connie Francis fan club, who everyone called ‘effeminate’. In a neighbouring village, there’d also been a gay man according to my sister, but he’d hung himself for that very reason. Neither men were exactly a role-model for me.

Boys from my social background automatically went on to the lower technical schools, to become carpenters, car mechanics, metal workers or painters. The word ‘painter’ sounded the least difficult. In my painting period I enjoyed fixing things up and making them nice; the smells and colours of the materials and the pleasure that I got from using my old, patched –up, oval paintbrush to create smooth and slanting brush strokes on a sash window and never letting the paint run. What I less enjoyed was the masculine world in which we worked and the daily conversations that never went further than football, cars, going out, drinking and sexy women! These were not exactly the subjects I was interested in.

Meanwhile, I was at home in my room always busy making things from wood, glass and fabric. Lamps everywhere, which I could operate from my bed; sketchbooks full of drawings of pop stars; self-designed wallpaper and so on. During that time I also created scrap books which I kept in a secret place, with photos and articles about ‘free love’, hippies and subjects with a vague sexual tint, all of which were cut out of the Musical Express, the Panorama and other magazines.

Somewhere in an article, I read about a gay club for young students which took place on a Sunday evening on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam. I was sixteen when I plucked up enough courage to go there. I spent two evenings however, standing by the canal opposite the building, just watching before I dared to go in. They were students who just happened to be gay and therefore ranked way above me. However, on the third attempt, I went inside. I was welcomed by Father van Kilsdonk who immediately put me at ease and on future visits, always took the time to speak to me and ask how it was going. The third time I went, I was asked by a photographer to pose for photos with a black guy (clothed) in his studio in Amsterdam. When I blurted this out in my enthusiasm the following day to my painter colleagues, I was firmly told, “They’ll be homos then!” I knew then that I could never bring the two worlds together and realized that eventually I’d have to leave.

For a while, I did boring administrative work in an office but was just happy to get out of my painting overalls. Between 1972 and 1976, I had a great time as a student nurse in a psychiatric hospital. I felt at home amongst the ‘patients’: everyone was different and nobody was completely normal. We made good use of the freedom we had in those days, to do entertaining and special things with the hospitalized patients. I remember an older man who had spent years just sitting in his chair staring at the world. I bought him a box of coloured pencils and a sketch block. To everyone’s amazement, he drew houses every day for the next two years. On the day that he died, on his last page, we found a drawing of a boat on the water.

In 1975 I got to know the man who, in 2005, I also married. We have three children, two of which we’ve raised together with two women. Of all my creative works, my relationship and fatherhood are the most important. The shaping and changing of both are an ongoing process.

At the end of the Seventies, I literally moved into playing with light, darkness and form with various youth theatre groups. We created productions that were performed in theatres as well as schools and community centres. It was a party every time and a challenge to turn the most unpromising and gloomy locations into ‘a black box’ in which to perform, so that the set, the actors and the story could be properly lit and that magic of the theatre could happen. Children were often surprised at the sort of wonderful worlds that could be created in their schools.

Halfway through the Eighties, I resigned from the theatre company where for five years I’d been the set designer. I’d had a wonderful job with all the freedom I could want but still had the feeling that there were more possibilities for me. That feeling grew into a desire to do something which came from myself alone and wasn’t the result of someone else’s project. The empty feeling and insecurity that resulted from giving up my job actually became fertile ground for the experimentation and development of my own ideas, form and style.

During that same period, I wanted to explore my own emotional life and personal development. I attended a weekend with the theme, ‘Men and Personal Leadership’ and a new world opened up for me. I learned to let my own light shine brighter than my inner shadows. I began to understand how and where I was blocking my own progress: my lack of self-worth, my origins and not wanting to dwell on the painful aspects of my life. I went back a few times and within six months began to lead groups myself, adapting the same values that I applied to my creative life, namely; working and playing with the qualities that you have. Standing still; examining and analyzing what the realities are and acceptance of those realities. Letting yourself be touched and inspired by the movements of light and dark, colours and forms. Feeling your deepest desires. Following your ‘bliss’!

Translation Dave Richardson