Last year I befriended a former university professor of mine on Facebook and found out that he is, besides a great teacher, also a gifted oil painter. He makes wonderful portraits with a traditional 17th century technique, using many layers of oil paint over one another to create a result that makes the subjects in the painting look very realistic in an old painting kind of way (I’m not a painter so it’s not easy to describe my feeling about it). You can see some of his work here on his website.
Throughout last year I saw his wonderful pieces of art coming past on my newsfeed and loved all of them. So beautiful, so life like, so interesting. I noticed he paints people from all kinds of cultures and he does an amazing job at it.
I got inspired to write this post after I read a bit more into his latest exhibit, ‘Hoezo Achtergrond?’ or in English: ‘What background?’. In this exhibit he created twelve portraits of ordinary, special Dutch people from all different cultures. Vaz shows with his exhibit that since we have a multicultural society we should learn to see the differences between one another and appreciate and embrace them. We should let the different cultures connect us rather than divide us, and with that connection enrich us all. The portraits are larger than life, letting the spectator really take a good look at the person in the picture. And the background? The background is white, because does it really matter what your background is?
Just take a look at all these paintings:
Peter Vaz Nunes – Hoezo achtergrond? – What background?
I don’t know about you, but I am fascinated by the faces, wonder what those people are like. Not necessarily where they are from (well… I am a traveler, so I would love to hear about where they or their ancestors came from and what that country or culture is like), but what makes them tick. There is a truth in their eyes that makes you want have a cup of coffee with them and chat about life.
In a world where cultures get more and more blended in, we should indeed try and embrace the diversity. Wouldn’t it be boring if everybody would look the same? We live in a world where we try to blend in, but want to stand out at the same time. We want to be unique, but not considered ‘different’. Well, guess what, we are all unique, like snowflakes, but we’re also all the same, we’re all human, we all want to love and be loved, we all want respect and should respect one another.
This beautiful acronym for Diversity sums it up quite nicely, I guess.
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