Artwork by Robert Vaessen
Hello, my name is Robert Vaessen, I am a 61 years old male and have a wonderful wife and three grown children and live in Napier, New Zealand.
Years ago I used to paint and do wood carvings, play the classical guitar and was involved with various art mediums. I love real, authentic and good art of high quality.
I never went to art school, but always have loved following different artists and their styles. Art involves my every day, it is all around us.
After the loss of our daughter and subsequent tragedies over the years, my ability and inner freedom to paint, draw and play music all seem to have become frozen.. though only recently and thankfully have begun to surface again..
The personal challenges I face are described here..
My wife Helen, developed severe bi-polar and has been sick for 26 years with this illness resulting in many episodes. It also resulted in the death of our first-born daughter, Siobh’an.
Then 15 years ago my wife developed Multiple Sclerosis and she now needs a walking frame to get around.
Raising our three other children plus the domestics of life have combined to put a stop over these years to many of the creative endeavours which I used to enjoy. That has been a great sadness.
Last year my wife went away to ‘House-Mind’ some friends property, but has never come back. I don’t even know where she is, and am broken.
My eldest son is a Genetic Researcher now and can see these many years of stress and illness with emotional clarity. So he strongly encourages me to rehabilitate my life by again getting involved with my past passions in art and in music. My challenges seem like mountains, but believe that once I can get acquainted again with art, my inner freedoms will release and I will heal.
I would Love to learn properly how to draw and paint in the Classical Style.
To put a painting on the wall which captures with realism and drama, the years of my life’s travels and perhaps also some of the suffering.
It would fulfil my life’s yearning to paint like Jan van Eyck and Johannes Vermeer. I also am of Dutch origin and have always felt that I do have a master somewhere in me and would love to find out if that is true.
The Old Master Academy shows that it would fulfil this dream.
To help explore what potentiality may be hidden there. It is a wonderful thing to come across this Academy for many people, I think.
The work here is incredible and I never thought that Classical art and its methods were still taught so comprehensively today.
I would love to win a course with you as I am financially broke, being now on my own and also on Accident Compensation while waiting for an operation on my hand. I have never promoted myself, being a Self-Employed Tiler for the past 20 years and I rely on ‘Word-Of-Mouth’ to make my income. So as far as asking people to vote for me to win the Old Master’s Academy Course it would be on the basis of helping a poor guy hopefully finding his artistic potential and rehabilitate my life, in view of the path I have walked.
Yours Sincerely,
Robert Vaessen
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