During the artist in residency project week of Studio 1931, Raafat Ballan, Peter de Boer and Sjaak Kooij made their first joint work. Inspired by the environment of the Wadden Sea and the informal working together, this resulted in conversations and reflection on the making of painting. Although the painters all have a completely different painting style, they met each other in the intuitive work within a process. For the individual maker, this already means that a painting is never conceived and fixed in advance, but expresses itself as an occasional collective as a wave of reflection and participation, from action to reaction. Actions or figures by one painter have been worked through by another in everyone’s own material or handwriting.

 The work Passing by Jupiter (2022) can be seen as a similar wave. Not only in the process of making, but also in what it represents. A procession of people, going through life, who sometimes take a flight forward, and other times have to take a step back. Not every detail is worked out to the same extent, but is a convergence of fragments of stories, characters and unusual events.

When the plan got accepted at Bigart they started working on a 11m wide an 2.70m high oilpainting on black paper. The work shows an exodus of people on the mudflats carrying plants in a storm. Slowly the work came together and November 4-6 2022 the work was shown at Bajeskwartier Amsterdam together with 50 other big artworks. https://bigart.nu