Biography
Gerrit (1959) was born and raised on a farm in the Veluwe village of Putten. As a child, Gerrit drew a lot, inspired by everything he saw in the nature around the farm. After a number of years of training at a Vrije Academie in Nunspeet, Gerrit started making sculptures. Particularly in bronze and steel.
From the “less is more” perspective, Gerrit tries to capture the essence in his steel images. A few lines are often enough to capture the character in a given image. One of his great sources of inspiration is sport. And especially skating and cycling.
Gerrit has completed the real Frisian Eleven Cities Tour three times and goes to Austria every year to skate on the Weissensee. This has led to Gerrit making bronze statues for years on behalf of the KNSB (Royal Dutch Skating Federation).
But Gerrit is also an avid cyclist and in his spare time he enjoys riding around the beautiful Veluwe forests. He also tries to take a few days off every year to go cycling in the French Alps. He tries to capture the expressiveness of athletes, whereby the static image starts to move, as it were.
Gerrit's most recent work is the so-called “zinky” portraits. These are scenes that are manually cut from Corten steel with a plasma cutter, with a weathered zinc plate as a background. The cyclists' objects are an example of this.
Gerrit exhibits frequently and often works on commission.
