Painter writes a book

Thomas Dielman’s paintings have been part of our rental collection for several years. Following the publication of his first novel ‘Het straatfeest’, we meet in the heart of Brussels and I am curious to know how his story and the series of accompanying paintings came about.

I remember your earliest work: a series of double portraits. That series was rather dark and charged in nature, they were not happy characters.

> After I graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp in 2010, these were indeed my first works: double portraits. I liked making these double portraits without having both portraits depicted synchronised. So I made 1 portrait and, when it was finished, I hung a towel over it so as not to paint the second portrait in the same way. That way, there is a kind of tension in the painting that I find very interesting. So you wonder ‘what is actually going wrong here?’, ‘what is happening here?’.

In my current series of paintings, I revert to those double portraits. This series is not very ‘happy’ either. Contact between many people is very superficial these days. Everything seems so shabby to me. I think this is because of neoliberalism and its consequences. Success and money have become status symbols. Even on social media, people only show a small piece of themselves; no one seems to allow themselves to be vulnerable anymore. Nowadays, success is also seen as the absence of problems. People are increasingly starting to apply this in real life too, not just in the digital world. This does worry me. If no one wants to be known any more, it soon becomes about trivial matters and a dinner between friends is terribly boring.
So why do we still go to parties and dinners? To show everyone ‘I’m doing very well’ and ‘I’m dressed nicely’? It then becomes more like a parade, a catwalk. No more communication is established. That’s a shame, isn’t it?

The Bernice collection contains mostly paintings from your series on Italy. You told me that this series is about beauty and colour. So a contrast to the darkness of your portraits.

> The series ‘I wish I were Italian’ brings together my passion for Italy, colour and beauty. I want to make people wonder and just happy. I want to make the world a better place by showing how beautiful the world is.

Both this series and the later still lifes are about the beauty of everyday life. We are surrounded by works of art. In here (a cosy coffee bar in the Dansaert district), I could also find at least 10 beautiful still lifes.

But at the same time, therefore, I also want to make the world a better place by pointing out that this beautiful world is under threat. And then I again come to our current economic system. There used to be a God, now there is money and success behind which one runs. People have adapted to this new reality and radiate it.

These 2 facets: the beauty of our world and the threat to this beautiful world come together in my novel.

Your book is not a classic artist monograph with an overview of your oeuvre and accompanying text?

> True. My book is a pictorial narrative. Each chapter starts with an image of a painting of the street I walk through. During my job as a lawyer, I did a daily walk from Rue Melsens in Brussels to a street in the upper town. I crossed 18 streets and 2 squares to get to work. I walked from the lower town to the upper town and in the evening I took the same walk back. That daily walk was lovely. I took the same route every day. It was a half-hour walk and during whichI could think about what had happened at work yesterday and what I was going to do that day. Gradually, on that route, I knew every stone, statue, square and tree.

I then bought a dictionnaire of the streets of Brussels and started reading about every street on my route. There is a whole story behind every street. Brussels has existed for over 1,000 years so a lot has happened: wars, revolutions, new rulers, … Those 20 streets I walked every day were once part of other streets, people were murdered there, the river Zenne used to be exposed, …. Those streets have come to life. Those stories put your own story into perspective.

So you totally immersed yourself in those streets, literally and figuratively. You ‘became’ your route actually?

> Indeed. When I stopped being a lawyer, I stopped walking too. I missed that walk. That’s why I started making those 20 paintings, one of each street I had to pass through.

Another impetus for the book was my love for the work of British writer Virginia Woolf. She went for walks very often to reflect. In her second book ‘Night and Day’, the main character, Katharine, walks the streets of London a lot. During those walks, we read those characters’ thoughts that are, as it were, triggered by walking. Also in ‘Mrs Dalloway’, one of her best-known books, the author looks into the mind of her main character while walking in London. Along with James Joyce, Virginia Woolf introduced the idea to literature that you shape a story not just by the narration of successive acts but mainly by depicting the thoughts of the different characters. She gets to know a character from the inside. She also writes a lot about colours in her books.

While painting this series of street scenes, I also got to know Brusselsblogt. A very cool website with ‘all things Brussels’, art, restaurant reviews, etc… I contacted them and they were interested in publishing these paintings. With the paintings, I then started writing texts with the character named Thierry. Every month, Brusselblogt published a new painting with an accompanying text. And so, after 21 months, the whole walk came to fruition and thus a book.

Your book is a novel depicting your paintings?

> Yes. A painting of the street Thierry walks through introduces each chapter. So there are 20 chapters. It all starts in Melssensstraat, near Place Sainte-Catherine. It’s a literary novel about the beauty of those streets. The better you know a city the more you like that city. The history of those streets and of those state names are amazing.

In my paintings, I sometimes run to my limits to convey my ideas. With words, I don’t have that problem. The possibilities are then endless.

During that walk, Thierry’s thoughts come up. He has problems at work and also an old friend reappears uninvited. Will Thierry arrive at work on time?

You also did a self-portrait in one of the Brussels streets (pictured above)

> Yes, this is the last of the 20 paintings, in the Munthofstraat in Saint-Gilles. I myself then look back, I look back one last time at my travelled route, at the 20 streets. The 20 canvases are each about 130×180 cm. I painted the thoughts of the character Thierry during the walk over the images of the streets. The first painting in the series, i.e. Melsensstraat, is currently on display at the Brussels Museum of Contemporary Art Centrale at the group exhibition ‘Hosting’.

Other thoughts are about Thierry’s childhood, the hour he has to keep an eye on, colours. Or sex, when someone stumbles out of a dancehall half-naked, you know, that sort of things.

Suppose 1 painting from the Brussels series is sold. Do you consider the series interrupted?

> No, I don’t think so now but I used to feel that way. I do think it’s important to give a portfolio to the buyer of the whole series so he or she knows that their painting is part of a greater whole. That way they hang mysteriously with the other owners. I do like that idea.

It might be a way to connect people? All buyers of the series meet once a year to talk about it.

> Yes! And it would also be kind of cool to see the whole series displayed in one space one day. It has to be a very large space though. One walk through a special part of Brussels.

The book ‘Het straatfeest’ by Thomas Dielman has 86 pages, is available from 22 November 2024 via boekscout.co.uk and costs 18.5€ (shipping included).

https://www.boekscout.nl/shop2/boek/9789465094953