Roy Kerckhoffs

Born and raised in the Netherlands, early on, Roy was interested in visual arts: his father taught him to draw when he was 3-4 years old. Roy became fascinated by the paintings of the Dutch Masters and later he became interested in photography when his parents bought a small point-and-shoot camera for him when he was about 10 years old. Roy moved to San Diego, California in 2003 to become a scientist at the University of California San Diego (he has a PhD in biomedical engineering). As a self-taught photographer, he founded Eyeball Photography with his wife Marie in 2008, which became Roy Kerckhoffs Art in 2014. Also early in that year Roy gave up his profession and career as a scientist to pursue a full time career as an artist. He lives with his wife and daughter in Carlsbad, California. 

Whenever he can he tries to do everything himself in-house when it comes to the presentation of his work, which includes creating color prints; printing on canvas; stretching canvas; mounting photos; cutting frame molding; assembling frames, and fitting art into frames.

In my work I enjoy conveying a story of a place with a history. I love bold textures as these are created by passing time, therefore putting emphasis on bygone days. In particular, I aim to show the beauty that exists in human-made wooden, concrete and steel structures contrasting with soft organic forms from nature. I draw most inspiration from industrial objects, ghost towns and coastal themes with an element of human origin in it. Human-made objects that are aging will show lots of texture and contrast; what’s more, because these objects have been around for a while, there are so many possible stories that are linked to these objects and the scenes that they exist in. 

To convey a story I create high-contrast black and white photographs and hand tint the photographs with either pastels, acrylics, oils, or a combination of them. In the early days of photography, people used to hand tint black and white photographs with transparent oils. More recently, I experimented with other media and now I also apply acrylics and oils to black and white photos on canvas - either thinned to stains or paint in scenes opaquely.

CA

United States