Since October 2018 I have been working on a new project about and with my father, the artist Richard Simoens. Richard Simoens was born in Deinze in 1947. In the sixties, he began to em-brace the artistic conceptions of the New Vision (De Nieuwe Visie). At that point, the colorful and almost naive style of Raoul De Keyser and Roger Raveel inspired a new cohort of young painters. Richard Simoens is one of them. But from 1980 to 1986, he distances himself from his mentor Raveel and goes his own way. This is reflected in his raw, powerful visual art: his drawings, paintings and sculptures.

I chose my father for two reasons. 1/ To honor him as an artist and to further disseminate his work as broadly as possible, as a token of love and appreciation. 2/ To explore and then closely examine my interpretation of his work and ‘artistic life’ – me being his son and an artist myself.

What is the meaning of this encounter between a father and son, and how will it affect two artists? What similarities and differences do our artistic vision entail and what are the possible stories, waiting to unfold? What are the photographic possibilities of this project? How does a son see his father and how does the father deal with that – with the confrontation, the recognition and the acknowledgement?

This project is not just a multifaceted homage to my father and his artistic work, it is also about the way a son sees his father, about the complexity of a father-son relationship – when you dig deeper into the matter. To me, honoring his work is a way to gain entry into this matter.