Gateway

"It's funny how certain forms re-occur. I suppose for different painters things recur, even if they don't want them to. In history there are many examples of artists working on recurring themes – the British artist John Walker once said to me that a painter has only two or three compositions in him in a lifetime. I don't want that to be true … You are always trying to search for some sort of originality, hoping that some of the forms haven’t been done before, not quite … I like that attempt, to think you can aim at it, even if you don’t succeed. That’s why I kept away from schools of painting or movements, because I don’t want to become a demonstrator of any current mode. The painting The gate beyond the gate is related to this. It was done in Canberra during my period as the Creative Arts Fellow at the Australian National University – it was triggered by a line of poetry late at night …"

Jan Senbergs
[Hendrik Kolenberg, Jan Senbergs complete screenprints 1960-88, pg 62]