Jan Pater
“Jan Pater is a sculptor who does not search, but finds.”
When he starts working on a sculpture he starts without aim, purely from his feelings to expression, supple and free in interaction with the material.
He mainly works in stone or wood. The female torso is his source of inspirations. She gives him the opportunity to combine movement, tension and sequences of surfaces and lines into a combination of recognizability and abstraction.
Jan Pater alternates working in The Netherlands and Italy and exposes among other things in The Netherlands, Belgium and Norway.
The rationale of the sculptures of Jan Pater
When Jan Pater begins work on a sculpture, there is a ‘given’, but the result cannot be predicted. He begins by selecting the stone. The colour and hardness determine the result to a certain extent and each type of stone has its own unique form of expression. The first phase of the creative process therefore involves the sculptor establishing a relationship with the stone, which will carry him to the image that will ultimately emerge from it.
Apart from the choice of stone, he has no clearly defined plan at the start of the creative process. In fact, Jan believes in the idea that the figure should emerge from the stone by itself. There is often a pronounced twist in his female torsos. Sometimes he creates an almost bewitching serenity when the movement is present but hardly perceptible.
It goes without saying that most of the female torsos that Jan Pater creates are polished. This not only brings out the colours of the stone but also increases the ‘touch-ability’ of the sculptures. Many of his works almost automatically invite the viewer to touch them!
Since 2003 Jan has worked at Studio Sem in Pietrasanta in Italy. With each successive trip to Italy his work became more minimal, abstract and elegant. The once round undulating volumes of his first torsos have become more geometric and linear with harder edges and flatter planes. His forms sometimes feel like the marks of a calligraphers brush, reinventing the figure with one single stroke.
His focus has always been the torso. He experimented with a variety of stones including onyx and granite, using stones with bold veining or extravagant colour.
He has successfully translated some of his more iconic sculpture into delicate, elegant jewelry using semi-precious stones, silver and gold with additions of diamonds.
Jan is always surprising us with new forms combined with unique stones in his search for the essential.