Rob de Graaf (The Hague, 1960) considers his work primarily as a research. Methods, mains and (especially) the process of painting are important. My abstract paintings and drawings form the imagination of this process.

Content
“As regards content my ‘search’ is driven by my fascination for opposites; thinking-acting, conscious-unconscious, heart-matter, man-woman, good-evil, geometric-organic, chaos and order, etc. And more important; how do these opposites interact?
In the previous years, while maintaining the opposites in my paintings, I was looking for synthesis, unity and balance in one image. A recurring theme was ‘chaos & order’. At a given moment for me ‘chaos & order’ were no longer incompatible. I looked at them as two forces, which cannot exist without each other. Chaos appeared to me not as a lack of order, but as simplicity hidden behind complexity. Chaos, the ‘prima materia’ and source of creativity is not entirely unpredictable and unstructured, but it has its own order and structure. Chaos is order disguised as randomness, a dynamic process that powered by awareness leads to order. For me, chaos is rhythm.
Since a few years I have the idea that antagonisms in fact not at all or hardly exist. In other words, the constant attention to opposites is just keeping me off from the experience of unity. Everything in our lives be experienced as one (not two or non-dual). Now I consider opposites as a matter of (selective) perception, an individual, subjective experience of reality.
It is eventually my frame of reference (whole of personal values, standards, knowledge and experience) that stipulates my perception. This idea has rather influenced my more recent work. In my paintings I’m still engaged on ‘dynamic order’ and I still speak my own (picture)language. However, by adding for example realistic elements I experiment not only with my own perception, but at the same time with the perception of those who eventually will see my work. What I’m in fact asking the spectator is to become aware of this. When you can let go what kind of ideas and feelings perception has produced, a painting can always be experienced in several manners. For example my work can be observed in a ‘romantic’ way; this means intuitive, it concerns direct experience, feelings prevail. But also ‘classical’; this means the underlying form of reality, the structure, the mathematical principles, etc.
In this way I play with the boundaries between abstraction and figuration. Seeing, perceiving, experiencing, living may come loose from my or your frame of reference. My goal; not judging or just naming opposites or contradictions. Nothing is what it seems and everything is ‘a happening’. Essence is not to define, but, as the Chinese say, the invisible mother of all creatures. I only can wonder myself."

Form
“I paint on square canvases in different formats. A square doesn’t give direction and focuses the attention of the observer. With this canvases lying flat on the floor of my studio I paint both spontaneously as well as very consciously. In my process the separation between consciously and unconsciously is weakening. I usually paint with 'ordinary' decorator's paint (alkyd). This type of paint is slow, and yet it has a more or less fixed form. It flows and carries on running even after the paint has been applied. That’s why this paint, in contrast to regular oilpaint, fits very well with my way of working. Not everything is tied up immediately and coincidence also gets a fair chance. With alkydpaint I have more possibilities to use other appliances than brushes for painting. By example, I often use a hairdryer, paint stripper or a gas burner for modelling the paint after applying. In this way I come optimally in conversation with the paint.

Exploring my goals and using texture, color, form and composition I developed my own (picture-)language. Apart from their ultimate form, in which they give account of my personal working process, they are in their construction in this way increasingly ‘readable’. The coarse, amorfe shapes represent for example chaos. De dot stands for an occurrence and a lath of dots raster for interaction between a series of occurrences or a network of relationships. The line is the path; sometimes right, mostly not. The circle symbolizes the universal and the square and the rectangle are standing for confrontation, also starting all over again. Colors have their own meaning as well. Red symbolizes the feminine nature, white the masculine nature. Purple or violet are standing for reflection and modesty. At last my flower-shapes refer to perfection and the absolute. However, in my ‘language’ a form, line or dot cannot be seen on their own. Esthetism of the composition is primarily not my goal as well. Much more important I consider the balance between the one form and the other, the way they relate and interact with each other.”