Biography

Jasper van den Ham (1978) is a painter who works and lives in a small village in the Netherlands.

Jasper started out as a photographer. In 2015 he launched a photobook through crowdfunding and won the Cultuurprijs in Woerden. In 2017 he was selected for New Photo, a book showing the 100 most appealing and upcoming photography talents in the Netherlands (Dutch Photography Talent 2017). Four years later he started painting. Since 2023 Jasper is represented by Contempo Gallery in Rotterdam. Since then his work has been shown at art fairs in the Netherlands, like PAN Amsterdam and the KunstRAI.

Artist statement

My work is about the character of places I visit and the experiences I have while I'm there. Nature plays a major role in my paintings, particularly trees and plants. It's almost like they have their own personalities, auras, and colors they reflect. I represent my experiences by the color palettes I choose as well as how they're applied, often in multiple layers, especially around the edges of elements of my compositions, in order to share with viewers what I actually see and feel. The resulting paintings are not necessarily about specific locations, but rather combinations of locations from different journeys to different places. What start out as distinct and separate geographies become one in my mind. As such, the resulting paintings become combinations of things I see in the course of my travels and how I reflect on them once I'm gone.