Ronald de Jong

Ronald de Jong, based in Huis ter Heide, Netherlands, approaches painting as a form of play with paint. He works without a predetermined style or endpoint, beginning each canvas impulsively and allowing fantasy and the present moment to guide what comes next. Each painting is treated as a new game where prior experience and knowledge play no role, and he leaves his canvases untitled so they remain purely visual language.

De Jong is self-taught and deliberately avoids learning about art, style, or technique, wanting to ensure his work comes entirely from himself. He works exclusively with acrylic paint, often using a palette knife. Many of his paintings develop over months through repeated cycles of building up, changing, observing, scraping back, smoothing, and rebuilding. He seeks to create a tension between movement and rest, typically working in earthier tones.

Though nature—stones, rocks, landslides, water, seas, and skies—passes unconsciously through his work, what interests him is the experience of entering a painting and moving through unexpected shifts of color, lines, and structures. Elements may seem to collide, yet he perceives an underlying flow of cause and effect within the composition.