Leon Veerman

The sculptures of the sculptor Leon Veerman (1950) are the epitome of the evocative power of simplicity. With great respect for, and involvement in, his living environment, he makes bronze sculptures inspired by shapes from nature, especially bird figures. In his sculptures he combines organic and geometric shapes into exciting abstracted bronze sculptures, which refer to eternally moving nature. His sculptures are very spacious, beautiful from all sides and reduced to apparently simple bronze shapes. As a three-dimensional drawing with an exciting interplay of lines and surfaces. With a very appropriate austerity. More with less; no complicated details or multicolored patinas, but just the right accents in the right place.

In everything you feel the love, patience and commitment with which Leon Veerman studies and depicts his subjects. We experience the freedom and power that his birds convey to us, but also the elegance and tenderness. Leon Veerman's birds evoke very human associations and desires in us. Sometimes they are just people who are birds of Leon and sometimes you wish you could be one of them. Leon Veerman says: "The concern for the environment became an important motive for me. In my images I can shape my involvement with nature and my concern for the environment." Besides being a sculptor, Leon Veerman is a wanderer who likes to go out into nature for days on end. There he finds the inspiration for his images. "I love to experience nature. It calms me down.

Veerman's earliest sculptures speak of a great commitment to nature. Titles such as 'Gaia', 'Earth's lament' and 'World in the making' make this more than clear. Veerman also became fascinated by the perfection of the spherical shape. By a simple intervention he showed how many possibilities there are with a simple form as a starting point. While earlier his sculptures about nature and his research into the shape of the sphere formed two separate lines in his work, this now coincided. sculptures with the spherical shape as a starting point took the form of waves and birds.

At the beginning of his artistry, Leon Veerman made sculptures of stylized birds. In recent years he has been making birds again. Unlike their more realistic predecessors, they are now no more than a curvature in bronze, a wave with wings. It appears to have been cut from a sphere, which now acts as the wings and body. On top is the shiny polished head. The elongated beasts put their heads in the sand, or their noses in the wind. They are caricatures with human qualities. They gracefully fly by, so they dive down like hungry vultures, ready to prey their claws. In these birds, the graceful and the threatening is constantly present.

Leon Veerman patines all his sculptures himself. Applying the patina is the finishing touch of a bronze sculpture. Because he patinates parts of the sculpture and polishes other parts to a glossy finish, he shapes the eternal course of nature that gives new life to life from old dull matter.

Leon Veerman studied at the academy of visual arts in Utrecht.