TF: You do a lot of shows a year?

LL: About twelve to fifteen. In 2004 I had my first two museum exhibits; that was very exciting. Then, throughout the year a number of shows all over the States. East Coast is great; the work does incredibly well with, funny enough, the Harvard elite, in Boston. But I also love going to regional places for shows; you meet a completely different crowd. You can still sense a slower pace of life, a certain naivety that reminds me of Walt Whitman… And then, after all these years after fleeing Europe and throwing away my Dutch passport last year to become American, I now suddenly start showing and selling a lot back over there… I’ll do shows in Zurich and London this year.

TF: You also do a lot of commissions. Does that create a conflict for you? Does it compete with doing your own work?

LL: No, on the contrary. I think it is very healthy for an artist to balance the life of artisan, who has an active dialog with society, and is consequently economically enabled to disappear into his own world in the studio without any constraints. You’ve often heard the disdainful expression of “having to paint paintings that ‘fit the couch.’ But to me it seems that the real achievement is to paint something that is going to work with that damned couch but that at the same time does not become decorative; holds its own space; still being what art is meant to be: inspiring. There is nothing new to that idea of course… In the 16-17th Century you wouldn’t find an artist painting if he couldn’t make a decent living at it. It wasn’t till the French started coming up with the Romantic idea that the artist had to pine away, isolated from society in order to create his masterpiece—preferably, shortly after that, dying in poverty, only to be rediscovered shortly after his demise and become a Saint. This may have been true in one period, Van Gogh for instance was doing work definitely too early for his own good, too early to be appreciated and recognized, but I think it hasn’t quite worked like that for a long time. Another genius, Rothko, got lots of recognition during his life. Besides, I have very often gotten very interesting ideas for new work for myself, based on the restrictions of a specific project or space that I was working on. So I count myself lucky that at this point in my career (and this can change of course at any moment), I happen to do work that is for me the most personal work, and at the same time universally embraced by minimalists and modernists alike…

TF: What are you inspired by?

LL: Partly from the commissions and projects that come my way. They start a reflective process that brings through the limitations, great new ideas up in me. The other trick I employ with commissions, is that I usually create a series based on the dimensions I have been given. This way the work, it becomes again my own, with a choice. When I present the work to clients, I give them a choice it tends to become much more a collaborative process, which is fun for everybody. So commissions really mean that I’m painting what I would be doing anyway, but knowing the paint and canvas and another month rent is paid for is quite inspiring to me.

Secondly, there is the...what I call ‘genetic cultural heritage’ of having grown up in a family of painters, in a country that is known for its masterful use of light. Only recently I realized that in a very confining Calvinist society, light was in the past the only tool these poor souls had to express their soul with. My ‘cultural escape’ from Europe to the US freed me up to create and invent my own interpretation of that light and that heritage.

Thirdly, I am inspired by everything that I see as ‘soulful;’ whether that be a walk in the canyons, with which I usually start my day, or movies, literature, and music; a lot of music; my 300 cd player is almost always on in my studio, in shuffle mode.

TF: Are there artists that are examples for you?

LL: Yes; many; all those, that I feel were able to touch the timeless, the heart, and were able to express that; Rembrandt, Vermeer, Walt Whitman, Herman Hesse, Prehistoric Cave Paintings, Kiefer’s Innen Raum, Tagore, Rilke, Goethe, Mahler, Bach, Keith Jarrett, the filmmaker Polanski, the actor Peter Sellers in “Being There.” I can go on and on…

Inside the artist's studio

TF: So, whom are you painting for?

LL: As my friend Charlie Haden, the famed jazz composer and musician with whom I collaborated last year in creating the artwork for his new cd “Land Of The Sun” says: “We need to create beauty in this world, now more than ever.” I translate that with awareness… We need to wake up; we need awareness in this world; now more than ever. To me that is the responsibility of the artist… to bring back the reflection that so many people don’t even have time for to ponder any longer. And I feel incredibly fortunate that I’ve been given the opportunity to do that through the universal language of my paintings.

"Tranfiguration2003.08" 36" x 36" Mixed media on canvas	"Charlie Haden CD cover"