'Outsider in the family'
Oil on canvas, 70 x 50 cm
Signed: below left 'buyck'
Harry Buyck (1928)
In this painting by the Antwerp artist Harry Buyck we instantly fell in love. The chubby daughter, only dressed in hat and necklace, stays prominently in the foreground. In her
nakedness she isn't erotic at all, but looks more like a polar bear you might want to cuddle. Undeniably she is an outsider, the 'black sheep'. Her father, mother or sister dear
don't know how to handle this scion of the family. Is her lifestyle excessive, does she have eccentric ideas or is she just leading another, contemporary life, that neither the
previous generation nor by her sister is understood? The painter, who hates a narrow-minded bourgeois way of life, leaves it open; the viewer personally may fill that.
The colorful canvases of Harry Buyck have a unique, expressionistic style and are therefore from a distance recognizable. The distorted, somewhat woody figures, are usually displayed
in a fiery color palette, demand your attention. Often he denounces something or provocates, but almost always there is an undertone of deep concern hidden in his paintings.
Harry Buyck is a filibuster. Initially he was a merchant navy officer and he sailed the seven seas, but after a while he stays ashore. In Ghent he begins the artists café
'The Dragon' but his desire for freedom makes him unfit for business. He enrols at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, where his thorough craftsmanship as an art painter
has grown. Since 1963 he has dozens of solo exhibitions and wins prestigious art prizes. He also coaches young talented artists and organizes, with others, numerous successful
art events.
His greatest strength is the way he captures on canvas the relationship between people in their own environment in a critical, ironic and passionate way so that it evokes emotions.
Is not that exactly what art is supposed to be, supposed to do?!
