Collin van der Sluijs currently resides in Maastricht, where he works as an illustrator/painter and runs a gallery, ‘Galerie Groen lLicht’ for contemporary art. He spend 8 years at degree level studying various art disciplines, in various institutions, in different schools across the Netherlands.

Currently he works both solely and in collaboration with fellow artist and good friend Rutger Termohlen. They’ve worked on a number of projects – sharing a vision on life and work – which as resulted in canvasses about daily life that question the society we live in.

1. What would you say is the most important theme in your work?
Trying to give things and situations that I do and don’t understand a place in my work. Things like human and animal behaviour (they’re quite similar). Our information generation, references to my childhood also. Basically everything that surrounds me every day.

2. What’s most inspiring to your working process?
The moments when things go wrong in a process just when you didn’t suspect it so you have to adapt to the situation you are in. All my thoughts have to ‘fit’ while working on paintings and installations.

3. Have you any strange talents that influence the work you produce or the way you produce it?
It seems that I always talk to myself while I’m working… to me it’s not that strange but for 99% of the people I know it is…

4. Which artist of the past would you resurrect to collaborate with and why?
My grandfather who passed away years ago, he taught me how to draw birds, he was really good at it because he had many tropical species. Think it would made him proud if he could see what I’m doing now.

5. Do you think your art is understood or misinterpreted and why?
Basically most people understand the work, because the situations I paint reflect on many people, it’s only how you interpret it of course, but that’s different for each one.

6. If you could decorate one place in the world what would it be and how would you do it?
Maybe paint all the ugly huge skyscrapers in big cities around the world because the pollute my view! Paint them like huge forests for example, so nature fights-back on the concrete, would be a life-lasting project but why not.

7. What to date has been your ‘cherry on the cake’ moment and what was it that got you there?
Hard question because I’m always looking forward, but there are some moments of course that are very satisfying like the exhibitions we did in Paris, Berlin, N.Y.C. and here in the Netherlands of course, the people who you meet and the friendships that grow out of it. Last year I was involved in making a video clip for DJ Funkerman feat. I-fan and we had to paint almost every part in that video, crazy to do but to see your work moving is so nice. All things that you dreamed of as a little kid coming true.

8. What we ask everyone! Does your artistic style influence your underwear?
Ha-ha, I reverse the question, once I painted the pattern from my boxer shorts on a canvas, so the underwear inspires the style I guess…

More info: www.collinvandersluijs.com | www.flickr.com/photos/collinvandersluijs