Peter Riezebos
PETER RIEZEBOS (1980) “The pure, spontaneous experience of a child essentially reflects the meaning of life.”
Drawing and painting was a method for Peter to express himself. As a person diagnosed with ADHD and Asperger’s, among others – a form of autism – Peter has experienced many obstacles in his life. His high school time was a difficult period in which he used his creativity daily to deal with reality. Peter was so well known for this that during the graduation ceremony, the school principal – somewhat disappointed by the meager drawings next to the answers to his exams – referred to this at length.
The cognitive obstacles in his life resulted in severe depression and related problems for which Peter was hospitalized for an extended period of time. After a plethora of diagnoses, his future looked particularly bleak. His medicinal cocktail – 15 pills a day – totally shut down his brain. Desolate … and yet Peter fortunately found the insight that this situation could not continue and that radical conversions were necessary.
Step by step, he climbed out of the deep valley, stopped any kind of medication and, with the help of his girlfriend, started studying. Now – eight years later and four studies later – Peter is flying around the world to conduct research on human learning ability at leading universities.
Creatively, he translates his experiences into paintings, drawings and poems. As an ADHD person, Peter enjoys a strong associative ability. Rather than a mental obstacle, he wields this unlimited creativity as a gift, indulging in uninhibited subconscious expressions. It is precisely from his appreciation of this spontaneous, pure creativity that he is a devotee of the COBRA style. The brightness and symphony of colors elicit emotion. In the manifestation of his creativity, he flirts with uninhibited childlike perception.
As a multidisciplinary scientist, Peter is influenced in his paintings by ready knowledge from his enjoyed education. Thus, several canvases display specific emotions linked to psychological factors and philosophical trappings. In doing so, he seeks to elicit deeper stirrings from observers.
