Chiel van Zelst
- Anna Lilli Garai
- May 27
- 6 min read
Chiel van Zelst paints as a way to mark time. His works come from a place of focus and repetition—each canvas a record of presence, of having been there. There’s a raw physicality to his process, with heavy layers, dense strokes, and surfaces that seem to breathe. He follows the rhythm of painting itself, letting each layer build on the last. What he finds in the studio changes from day to day—sometimes clear, sometimes surprising, but always connected to the act of being there and working through it.
Q: You said painting is like proving you’re still here. When did it start feeling that way for you?
A: I guess the start of proving we’re here begins with the first breath after birth. For me, painting is like breathing. I’ve been doing both—painting and breathing—for quite some time, and I think that’s what it comes down to: painting is proving you’re here.
There was no pivotal moment of insight or turnaround that made me start doing things differently. Maybe I’m manic—I call it the urge to assert ourselves. We all have the urge to prove that we’re here. And I do that with paint. Every painting is a sign of life. I am still here.
At the Academy, they taught you to look for a story to give your work more depth, but the story is already there. That’s you, yourself. I am because I paint. Your energy, your aura, the space you occupy. It’s about being aware of that. Otherwise, you’re just throwing paint around.
And so you form your paint into something. You can hang your paint on people, flowers, feelings. I don’t even want to paint “feeling.” What I feel is irrelevant. Only the energy of being is interesting to paint, because it’s incomprehensible.
Basically, I transport my life energy with paint to the canvas. I could have done something else today like anybody else, but this is what I did. I was here, and I made this painting.
Q: You talk about anger, resistance, raw emotion. Is painting a way to let it out, or to hold it still for a second?
A: Anger is just a good motivation to get to work—not a subject to make work about.
Painting is not therapy for me. And “letting it out” sounds too much like venting your feelings after a bad day at work.
I don’t have a job or a hobby. I paint. I don’t need to vent from things I don’t like to do. I always do what I like to do.
If I don’t sell my work, I eat dry bread. Hunger and having no materials makes me even more on edge. “Anger is an energy”—Johnny Rotten said that. And I need a lot of it, because I like to work big.
Actually, I make my paintings in a Zen-like way. No music, no phone, just me, the paint, and my breathing. There’s a lot of breathing going on. I listen to it—as confirmation that I’m here and doing what I do. I live, consume time, and take note of it.
Curiosity is a big driving force when painting. I want to know what it’s like to put a whole new layer over a painting that already looks basically fine. And then I regret it afterwards, because it often doesn’t get any better.
There’s no Command-Z in painting. Everything is one-off and direct. That’s what makes it interesting—especially in this age of AI and digital art. Paint is irreversible and unchangeable. Mistakes are rewarded, and perfection is punished.
Q: Your colors and brushstrokes hit hard. Do you see them more like noise, rhythm, or something else?
A: Hard times. Hard strokes. In your face. Just reflecting the time I live in.
For me, brushstrokes are like a direct connection between my hands and my head—the link between thinking and doing. When I’m painting, the thinking stops and the doing begins.
That’s important in life, especially in art.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking about art you want to make, but never actually doing it. Just light another cigarette. Hard strokes also mean you can fall hard. Nowadays I know that my so-called “ruined paintings,” the ones I can’t show to the world, are usually the best—or at least the most interesting. Not that I deliberately seek failure (which you can’t do), but those pieces that stand alone in a series.
The one that’s barely alive. Nothing better than a dead painting. Then the reanimation can really begin. Gone too far—and still bring it back. That’s the challenge. A good painter can turn things around.
I literally see my paintings like flipping big paving stones, like I used to do as a kid. You flip a heavy stone and look at what comes crawling from underneath. I want to paint that—the crawling stuff from under the paving stone. Literally paint the underground. What’s already there but isn’t visible.
Q: You’ve got punk, abstraction, even a bit of chaos in your work. What ties it all together for you?
A: Life energy brings it all together. Showing what’s already there but not visible.
Making things tangible—that’s in the punk movement too, with its DIY culture. Tackle things. Don’t wait. Make your own art, your gallery, your music.
In abstract art, I find the same freedom I experienced in punk graffiti culture. Although I don’t even know if I paint abstractly. With abstraction, it still has to be something—or at least have been something. Something from the real world that got abstracted. But I don’t abstract anything. I just want to paint nothing. A painting with crawling things on it that represents nothing.
As soon as it starts to look like something, I’d rather kill it with a few strokes of black paint to return to nothing. Nothing will last longer than something.
The lack of rules really frees you to make what you want. And chaos is good for an artist. Chaos is nature, and nature is chaos.
And nature doesn’t like open spaces either. Horror vacui—the fear of emptiness. That’s why I like my canvases fully painted. Front, back, sides. All covered with life energy. To give it presence. Like Gerhard Richter’s paintings. No story, no feelings. Just energy that appears to be there.
Q: Do you need pressure to paint—some kind of urgency—or can it come from a quieter place too?
A: I don’t need pressure or urgency to paint. It’s a force I can summon every day—from nine to five, or 24/7 if needed. I turn on the tap when I start working and turn it off when the day’s done.
Lately, I compare my work as a painter to a miner. A miner of “rare raw earths.” Every day, I go into my mine and drill with paint into my own weird self.
My paintings are the sample cards of what I’ve found so far.
Every time I descend into the mine shaft of my own existence—and then the question is: will I find something or not?
Sometimes it’s crap, and sometimes I find a diamond. Or lithium. I dig from experience, but it’s often about which turn you take at the right moment.
A studio full of canvases with no empty space and a lot of black—that’s what it usually comes down to.
You have to go all the way to know what’s underneath the next layer. By mining yourself, you can exhaust yourself—your source. A kind of YOLO with your own energy. Just like you can live like it’s your last day, you can also paint like it’s your last day. YOPO: You Only Paint Once. Every day again. Paint like it’s your last canvas. And if you don’t have a canvas, paint on wood. If you don’t have wood, paint on paper, or an old door. Acrylic, oil, household paint—it doesn’t matter. Painting may be the last place on Earth where there are no rules. That’s what’s so beautiful about it.
Q: What’s the moment you chase while you’re working—the release, the surprise, or just the doing?
A: I don’t chase a moment. I’m chased by the moment itself. By life. Time is all you have. The rest is secondary.
I create it and leave it at that. Even thinking of a title is too much—just aftereffects. My work is done as soon as the canvas is full. There is no release. Painting is always an unsatisfying experience.
Doing is what matters. Surprises are nice.
For me, art is doing. Taking it out of the dream and making it real—then going back to the dream again. Make that painting now. Today. Because tomorrow might not be here. YOPO: You Only Paint Once.
Proving to death that I am still here.
