FRANÇOISE STOOP - NORTHERN SOUL

The Dutch landscape is a major source of inspiration for Françoise Stoop (b. 1963). Her works incorporate the vertical rhythm of the rows of trees and the horizontal lines of the horizon. Stoop paints in subtle hues on unstretched jute, giving every work a three-dimensional effect. From 8 September 2017, a selection of her paintings will be shown at Kasteel het Nijenhuis, between Heino and Wijhe.

Françoise Stoop is influenced both by the early work of Piet Mondrian and by the simplicity of his later compositions. Like Mondrian, she celebrates the sense of boundlessness and the strict orderliness of the landscape. But unlike him, she does not stretch her canvases; they hang loosely within a frame or are moulded around one like a relief. This lends them an additional dimension. The support is jute, a coarse fabric woven from plant fibres with a golden sheen. The fabric varies in both colour and thickness, and sometimes completely soaks up the paint. Françoise Stoop makes her canvases herself, usually by recycling old potato sacks with all their irregularities, seams and frayed edges. The choice of material to some extent determines the shape of the paintings and gives them a touch of idiosyncrasy. They look as if they long to be free and may leap out of their frames at any moment.

Her works incorporate the vertical rhythm of the rows of trees and the horizontal lines of the horizon.

Françoise Stoop’s work was seen earlier at Museum de Fundatie when her painting January hung side by side with works by William Turner and two early pieces by Piet Mondrian in the exhibition Danger and Beauty – Turner and the Tradition of the Sublime (2015/2016). 

'Composition on Coarse Jute 52', acrylics on jute, 200 x 140 cm, collection of the artist 

'Composition on Coarse Jute 57', acrylics on jute, 117 x 130 cm, collection of the artist

'Composition on Coarse Jute 32', acrylics on jute, 118 x 102 cm, collection of the artist

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