De benenwagen nemen (walk, go on foot)

That is such a quaint phrase that you don't often hear more. But for Jan van der Leest, who grew up between the two world wars, sat there is usually not much else on He was a wanderer in heart and soul., curious about the world behind the horizon. He wanted love to travel and so did that with the resources that were available to him. Sometimes local, sometimes lifting with Carter meerijdend in the car of a more mediated friend, sometimes, if he had some money, with the train. In most cases, however, it was the car that brought him to where he wanted his bene, although he later in his life experienced the pleasure of owning a motorcycle BMW-Isetta later and everything in such a reed. Who was this Jan and why that emphasis on the legs car? That and you have to remember that managed after the second world war the hongerden people to culture. From politics, there was therefore much positive attention for art and culture. There was even a special arrangement whereby artists got a stipend in exchange for work.


		That way the Government hoped that the profession of artist got respect again, that many people would go and that there is a thriving art buy art climate would arise. That would help to forget the misery of the war and the population ' able-bodied ' mentally. So it came that Jan van der Leest, along with Theo Wolvecamp, officially from 1954 as painter with benefit in the gem.Hengelo was employed. The municipality bought work regularly so that the municipal collection now quite a few works of both painters, the expirimenteel, a traditional, the other contains. The style that Jan had used was a little old-fashioned themselves. That was logical, because he had not had a real training. Actually he came on at work of those older Veluwse painter Jack Hamel, who again as a late representative of the Hague school, and hence the Hollands Impressionism, is considered.


Most other painters in the 1950s felt more attracted to the much more severe forms and colours of expressionism. There were also, as Theo Wolvecamp, which Foltz new avenues that would lead to experimental and abstract art. Jan van der Leest so painted figurative. He tried portrait, figure and still life, but the best lag the landscape in all its manifestations-forms him. He found his motives initially especially in the immediate environment. The Woods and fields around Hengelo, all kinds of Nooks in the (bombed and so not really "pretty") city and everything that had to do with the railways. A railway embankment, a station, a train in the distance. And thus we come to the legs truck. Jan had to do everything on foot at that time, while he yearned for new landscapes, new cities, new images. There the background from which the large amount of paintings and drawings on the theme of railways in the oeuvre of Jan van der Leest declaring the restrictive character of the legs is: truck.Who can see the paintings now sympathize of the promise that something went hiding in the rail network of the 1950s. Cars there were not so many and the roads left to be desired, but the track! When the war damage was repaired, the world open again. The feeling to have the freedom to make use of them.

		Each painting of a railway embankment or train station, feelings of desire in itself. shackle Jan van der Leest paints that desire with a dreamy palette in a mysterious atmosphere. The railway historian is probably little wiser of these paintings. It is really the experience: the space that opens up, the freedom that allows itself to be aware of. One can this railway paintings consider as a separate form of landscape art. Not only the landscape and its features made by man are commonplace, also the possibility to travel through the landscape is suggested. In other words: the painter gives the viewer a push in the direction of their own imagination.

He seems to encourage the Viewer to go on journey through the landscape and self to figure out what comes afterwards, what lies behind the horizon. Trains, rail stations and levees already existed a hundred years and it would be foolish to assume that given that escaped to the attention of the painting would be. So there are more paintings around this theme. The best known are undoubtedly of the hand of Claude Monet, the famous French painter to whom we owe the impressionism. Because Jan van der Leest barely trained and was also at that time were not as many colors-reproductions, he has that work probably initially not known. Jan van der Leest paints that desire with a dreamy palette in a mysterious atmosphere. The railway historian is probably little wiser of these paintings. It is really the experience: the space that opens up, the freedom that allows itself to be aware of. One can this railway paintings consider as a separate form of landscape art. Not only the landscape and its features made by man are commonplace, also the possibility to travel through the landscape is suggested.

In other words: the painter gives the viewer a push in the direction of their own imagination. He seems to encourage the Viewer to go on journey through the landscape and self to figure out what comes afterwards, what lies behind the horizon.Trains, rail stations and levees already existed a hundred years and it would be foolish to assume that given that escaped to the attention of the painting would be. So there are more paintings around this theme. The best known are undoubtedly of the hand of Claude Monet, the famous French painter to whom we owe the impressionism.

Because Jan van der Leest barely trained and was also at that time, he has not so many colors that were probably initially work reproductions are not known. In any case, he recognized that work not from direct observation. This is shown by the story that Theo Wolvecamp told after they had been to Paris together. There they found in a museum that famous painting Gare Saint Lazare of Monet, showing how precisely a train steaming and puffing the great glides into stationsoverkapping. When Jan saw it he must continue his three-quarters of an hour watching and then sigh with grief at: "this painting I had 15 years earlier should see". It was him an absolute revelation! Of course, we need this kind of anecdotes, who still until far after his death by his friends to be told, take with a grain of salt. But still.An artist is in principle only with his canvas, paints and brushes. Jan sketched, and sometimes he put his ass outside on a little square and then worked in the limelight of the casual passer-by, but also his work came broadly in the privacy and solitude of the atelier tapped.

	If the work than on an exhibition at the publicity given price, makes it suddenly part of the art production of ages. A skilled artist has taught at the Academy to relate to that total and has its position in the big picture learning. Jan van der Leest was self-taught. He had learned and what he himself the box that large sum of the art and art history, knew he had gained through conversations with other artists, such as The Wolvecamp, Holtrop, Bob Stork-Riemko Damen and Fritz Spitz, which had had the opportunity to literally and figuratively to look beyond just their own atelier. Jan had to do with highly fragmented knowledge.

Now it is so that every artist should of course also stretched its possibilities and limitations. Jan has certainly done that admirably. He has extensive work in the craft. He has also deepened in forms of experiment, especially in the area of graphical techniques.He has traveled as much as he could. He has landscapes and cityscapes in various provinces of our country, in Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and France, drawn and painted with attention and love viewed. If he talks about his work, according to various interviews, he gives that evokes the emotion that the place for him, lies mainly in the atmosphere to capture this decided emotion to the Viewer. To speak by the paint, letting the light and the colors to make it work as setting him succeed time and time again to catch a special atmosphere. So you can say that he is, literally and figuratively, in the absence of other transportation, he went cheerfully and passionately on his way.