water

Let me tell you something about water. About how it feels to recognize that you aren't actually painting with pigment, but with something far older, wiser perhaps. The water comes first. That isn’t a technical choice; it’s an acknowledgement. A concession to what has always been true, but which you only truly grasp after experiencing it a few thousand times. You think you’re painting, but in reality, you’re negotiating. With molecules that couldn’t care less about your plans. Hydrogen bonds, surface tension; that’s what they call it. As if you could ever truly explain the way water clings to itself, defying gravity until the exact moment it decides to let go. And then, it flows. With a logic that isn't yours, yet one that rings true in a way you cannot put into words. The paint? That comes later. It allows itself to be taken, to be carried. Pigment that imagines it plays the lead, only to discover it is merely a passenger. Sometimes you wonder: am I still the painter here? Or am I simply the one watching, giving the water the space to do what it has always wanted to do?

Henk Vaars

Amsterdam, June 2026

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laws of the drop

Surface tension is the physical phenomenon where the surface of a liquid behaves like a resilient skin. Forces acting between the molecules bring this to pass. Thus, stray drops become spherical, perfect little orbs obeying their own rules, as if indifferent to the world around them.

interplay

Paint introduced to a drop or a pool of water via a brush does not simply spread. It follows the molecular architecture of the water, honoring the boundaries set by surface tension. I can only strike the first note. The further progression unfolds beyond me.

surrender

At a certain point, you understand the mechanics of this game between water and paint. You learn the rules and you see through the patterns. But then you also discover the paradox: you realize that you cannot forge a definitive plan. All your knowledge, all your experience, all your mastery of the material falls away the moment the first drop touches the paper. Water has its own will, its own logic. It accepts suggestions, but it never entirely obeys.

flow

It is difficult, I must confess. This uncertainty, this lack of control. Sometimes I feel like a sailor who has caught the wind just right, but just as often I am the swimmer struggling against the current, noticing that the water is the stronger force.

magic

In my work, everything lives, everything shifts, until the paper is bone dry. But then there are also those moments of pure magic, when the water and the paint conspire in a way I could never have devised myself.

trust

Working with water has changed me; I more easily accept that things will take their own course. Each time, I stand before my workbench, a great basin of water, with water, paint, and paper. Each time, I begin something new, the ending of which I do not know. And though I find it difficult, I wouldn't trade it for the world.