Ronald Noorman Biography

The Dutch artist Ronald Noorman (1951—2018) was a drawer pur sang who used every medium he could find–pencil, charcoal, watercolour, gouache, or pastel. He elaborated a virtuoso drawing style that is strikingly direct, as if the distance between his head, hand movement, and the sign appearing on the paper was reduced to its absolute minimum. Here and there you can recognise figurative elements, like the suggestion of a horizon or a labyrinthine landscape. These elements are the–possible–starting points of his drawings, and they often ensure that the more abstract, conceptual result of his artworks can only be read in one direction. His drawings rather seem to be about setting up boundaries, taking up space and leaving it open, about mine and thine. We see collisions of shapes and lines, contrasts between light and darkness, between dynamics and tranquility.