Jopie Huisman

“Jopie Huisman in the Dutch Royal Artist Archive: RKD”

“website of 'Jopie Huisman Museum', Workum”

“{{w|nl:Jopie Huisman|Jopie Huisman on the Dutch Wikipedia}}”

“He [Jopie] represents why I love The Netherlands and the Dutch people. Not the fancy Dutch living along the [Amsterdam] canals, but outside, in the real country. That doesn't seem to exist any longer, but it is still there - alive in the heart of the people. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“And indeed, I believe I understand what he means: that man who is walking and standing there, gazing around silently and proudly, who lives here - he is showing me his secret, something there is nothing special to look at, his barns, where nobody lives, where the unused old stuff which he paints is living. He makes me realize that one does not see these things. They have forgotten, they don't exist for us. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“Over the years I kept everything and anything from stuff and things that I came across during my life in trade, if they had emotional value to me. Always the simple goods and tools, from the farmers, the blacksmith, the carpenter, the baker and so on. I loved those things most in which I saw reflected the struggle for life very clearly.. ..old used up shoes, trousers, jackets, hats and children's vests, which I found in the rags, often patched up endlessly. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“I feel responsible, because so many people are leaning against me. Of course I can not take that pole away from them, they will fall over. I can see that those people need it! An ongoing struggle, an ordeal - because, if I say something I have to make it happen. In this way, painting is a religious matter. My paintings create a consciousness that offers comfort.. .It must appear in the light. Somebody of eighty years old who never ever would think about visiting a museum. Recognition! (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“Father was a beautiful person, Otherwise I couldn't have paint him like that [Jopie points to the portrait of his father in the living-room, hanging next to his mother's]. Painted in seven hours. On a Saturday. About three months before my mother had died. Three times [during the painting-session] he stood up: 'Are you getting ready, finally?' The way I am talking about them is just how you see them here. He was a skipper of mud, afterwards a farmer. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“Just six kilometers – never my world was bigger than that, actually. That starting time [of his painting & drawing, c. 1946], to which I return now; watercolor; I prefer a bit foggy, a small world - and not the cows themselves, but only their traces in the mist. The tenderness.. .I am currently [1993] deeply immersed in little trees and in the reeds. You have to experience it as mysticism, as a miracle. And afterwards: passing it on.. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“In 1946 it was the first time I saw a Van Gogh, a painting from his years in France. It was excactly what I had always felt here [in the fields of Friesland]: infinity, the unimaginable. I was bewildered and thought: who has been painting here for God's sake? Pink stripes in a green sky, you can't imagine! Ultramarine and carmine in the soil with a big yellow sun behind it.. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“I worked for months on this painting [title 'The Stone-wheelbarrow of C. Adema', 1977], for instance that well-bucket on the wheelbarrow I painted a twenty times or more, and it is constructed exactly as nature has shaped it. I want to make it harder and harder for myself. 'That's how it is' doesn’t exist for me. Deepening, that's what it is all about. My wish is to make in due time a small painting in which I can hardly discover any longer that it is painted, that it is just there, like that. Just something very simple. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“..because of self-preservation, selfishness and the urge for happiness love has prevailed in me, and in that way everything becomes enchanted and even an old dirty, discarded doll transforms in something that can move you. The attention I gave it [in his painting: 'Rag doll', 1975], together with the attention you give it, ensure that it is no longer doomed, not alone any more. If there is any background connected to my artwork, it is this. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“In 1973 I suddenly came into major private problems. I was completely thrown back on myself. Then I found those trousers between the old stuff. A worn-out, eighty times repaired, filthy pair of pants of a milker. I saw myself in it, it reflected the state of my soul. Then I took it with me and painted it [title: Pants of a cow milker]. Moreover because other because people recognized themselves in it, this has become my salvation. I found back my identity through it. As a matter of fact a self-portrait. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“I used to paint some things a few times, but I stopped, because I didn't get an answer. If the work has nothing to say to somebody else, I quit. I am not an idiot who is talking to himself and gazing at the tip of his brush. Painting you do together. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“These are the shoes of old Yde, a bachelor. He has worn them for forty years. He repaired them from below and above, from the inside and the outside. He gave me his shoes, for a bottle of brandy. They protected his feet for forty years. When they broke down, he tore them up and put them back on again. He could have bought new ones, because he already got state pension. But he was married with his shoes. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”