Reuver’s painted rendering of a Ferrari GTO, prominently hung in her living room and studio in Nijmegen, plays a major trick on visual perception. The refined reflections in the flowing bodywork initially make you think you are looking at an enlarged studio photo, but then – upon closer inspection in close-up – it turns out that you are indeed standing face to face with a painted work of art. “The expressive power lies in the meticulous elaboration of the various details and textures: the more difficult the material is to paint lifelike, the better,” says Brigitt Reuver, as she colours in the complex layered incidence of light on the spoke wheels of a Jaguar E-Type with a wafer-thin brush in the utmost concentration. “I usually save the wheels for last. Spoke wheels take the most time in that respect. For each spoke, you have to apply the light, shadow and reflection layer by layer, truly painstaking work. But that is precisely why hyperrealistic paintings are so fascinating to look at. It forces you as a spectator to look better, the definitive education of the eye. You look from far away and then up close, very close, and all over again. You are invited, as it were, to absorb all those magnificent details. As a result, the work is not just a copy, but it creates a reality of its own,” says the young painter whose creative talent has certainly not gone unnoticed in recent years. Masters of Lxry in the RAI, the Concours d’Élegance, the gala evening of Interclassics Maastricht, a film premiere in the Louwman Museum, the Masters in Zandvoort, a Ferrari presentation at Kroymans in Hilversum… There are few top car-related events where Brigitt Reuver has not stood with her easel. Her agenda is also largely filled with exhibitions and demonstrations at home and abroad for the rest of this year. Sales of her ‒ commissioned ‒ car paintings are also going remarkably well. Started with a 911 Turbo S Cabriolet “My first large work of art on canvas turned out to be an immediate hit: a Porsche 911 Turbo S Cabriolet, painted on a fine linen canvas in the late summer of 2016. I was immediately allowed to exhibit that painting at the Porsche Classic in Enter. It received so many enthusiastic responses that from that moment on I decided to follow my heart. This was what I had been looking for all this time, but had never found. I am very visually oriented and cars can really enchant you in that respect. There is a story behind every car and that is exactly what I want to convey on canvas. And when they have the chance to be portrayed, they can also stand still incredibly well.” The price of such a work of art? That is done in consultation with the customer, but the canvases quickly run into thousands of euros. The complete completion of a painting takes at least a month. “Painting can sometimes be a damn lonely existence, but it is something that makes me feel intensely happy. And I can also make other people happy with it. That feeling of satisfaction works both ways, of course. I am very certain of the quality of my work, otherwise I would not be so enthusiastic about presenting it to the public. I work with fire and passion on my car paintings and only deliver work when it is 100 percent good. That other people feel satisfied when they have such a painting hanging in their living room is ultimately my greatest ambition. Why on earth do you make art? And why does someone buy it? Because it triggers something. It gives an experience that goes much deeper than just the visual stimulus. That feeling makes me stand here every day, humming and smiling, painting.” Undefined painting Hyperrealism ‒ the painting style used by Brigitt Reuver ‒ originated in America in the late 1960s. The new movement is a reaction to the prevailing trend of abstract and conceptual art. In the wake of pop art, the hyperrealists highlight or criticize American consumer society. Both movements use subjects and techniques from the mass media. Hyperrealists, however, distinguish themselves through their extremely refined technique. They paint the most diverse everyday subjects: lots of shiny American cars and motorcycles, jukeboxes, neon-lit diners, but also cityscapes, brightly colored children’s toys and the painfully detailed representation of a shop window. A hyperrealistic painting is the result of a long and complicated technical process. Observing, looking, photographing, selecting and painting. It is this route of five steps that every artist in this genre follows. For each painting, the photographed reality forms the source, before paint and brushes come into play. Reuver: “I also work with a permanent photographer, who knows exactly what kind of light palette I am looking for for the car I have to paint. And where he has to accentuate those beautiful shiny reflections with his studio lights. The controversy that hyperrealism still evokes is also logical in a way because this art still floats between two worlds. On the one hand, hyperrealism is a tribute to the photographic image, on the other hand it tries to surpass it. I don’t just copy photos, but use them as a tool for devised compositions. For the same reason, I never paint people by the car. They only distract from what it is essentially about.” Figurative anchors As an autodidact, Brigitt Reuver mastered photorealistic painting techniques by combing through all the internet tutorials on the subject for months. From contemporary reality artists, but also all the lessons learned from the grand masters from the early beginnings, she is now thoroughly familiar with. “Only the materials and tools used are different. Where the first generation went from analogue photo film to oil paint, the youngest generation often goes from digital pixel to acrylic. Oil paint used to be known for containing much more pigment and for being much deeper in colour, but that has not been the case for a long time. The most important reason why I work with acrylic is the fast drying time: it allows you to work much faster. But determining the right colour remains difficult. That’s why I never paint difficult colour components at events. You often find yourself working in a hall like that under the green colour cast of fluorescent lighting, or even worse: dimmed blacklight lighting at more luxurious events. Which means you can never really judge whether the mixed paint colour is actually correct. But even in my own studio – where I have installed special lamps with the right colour temperature – I still regularly make mistakes in creating the right colour compositions. It all has to be very precise. The bright Ferrari red of the GTO is a completely different red than the original paint colour of the Aston Martin Vanquish Zagato Volante next to it. After a lot of experimenting, I now know more or less which colour codes to use, but even that is not an exact science.” The endless sketching, the constant search for a natural balance between functionality, structure and design… You could actually say that the basis of her hyper-realistic art has a lot in common with the regular process of automotive design. ‘Maybe I should have become a car designer’ “Maybe I missed out on a fantastic career as a car designer,” he says, somewhat surprised. “To be honest, I never thought about it, I never even considered it. But the affinity is undeniable. In both cases, the aesthetic bar is very high. As an artist, you also have a three-dimensional cadcam design in your head and on that basis you set down a number of figurative anchors. The artistic structure of all my works is largely determined by the design of the car. Where I apply the first paint accents depends on where the focus of the design is most strongly accentuated. That differs from model to model and also determines the perspective from which I portray the car. In this branch of sport, everything has to be right down to the millimeter. I notice it immediately if the proportions are not right. I once worked on a sketch that just wouldn’t work. I was 100 percent sure that I was completely wrong, but I couldn’t find the mistake. After two days of frustrated struggle I grabbed the paint roller and whizzed away… painting. In the end it turned out to be a calculation error of a few millimeters.” Glamourland, but always empty toilets Female painters remain seriously underexposed in the media. In the classic car world they are a curiosity. Passion for cars remains mainly a man’s thing. “When I was invited to a live demonstration for the first time I was terrified. What should I wear? And above all: what am I going to tell all those classic car specialists when they start asking complicated questions? Because I knew absolutely nothing about classic cars, nor about the technology and even less about the history. There I was, standing there a bit awkwardly on high heels and dressed in a much too beautiful dress doing my thing. I quickly said goodbye to that awkward pose. Even among the most expensive cars I now simply stand with my smudged painter’s apron and paint on army boots. Wonderfully bohemian and completely myself. In the meantime, I can also say quite a few words when it comes to classic cars, because of course you immerse yourself in the subject. But of course, you can’t erase that generation gap. You’re there as a young woman painting among, uh… not so young men anymore. It is indeed a completely different world that I have entered, but that is precisely what makes it so fascinating. I have not regretted for a moment that I chose this. The biggest difference with my daily living environment? When I go to a pop concert with people my age, there is usually a line from here to Tokyo at the women’s toilets. At most classic car fairs I can just walk in, haha.” The acceleration of her painting career went so well in the first two years that Brigitt Reuver could gradually start daydreaming about an international expansion of her field of work, although at the same time she puts the success that has befallen her into perspective with East Dutch sobriety. “Well, what a fantastically beautiful glamorous world, I thought to myself recently when I was walking around a completely deserted parking lot of an even more desolate stock exchange building at two in the morning, all alone and completely exhausted, lugging a few much too heavy frames under my arm. Why do you do that to yourself? Not because it generates a stable income easily. You do it because you are crazy. And at the same time because you think this is the most beautiful thing you have ever done.”
Source: www.autoweek.nl
