Willibrord Nota
Mostly working on paper with a wide range of materials and techniques, Nota creates subtle, layered work balancing between abstract and recognizable objects and shapes.
For him the experiment counts, and together with technique and color forms the important element of his work. As a professional artist, Nota is active since 2010, when he decided to fully focus on the arts, after being an designer and teacher at high school. He started his career with founding and owning a design company, mainly working on the design of fabrics and textiles.
Nota is influenced by the early Renaissance painters and the 17th Century Dutch artists, together with Ethnic art and Pop Art. All elements we see back in his work, but his inspiration is found in his close surroundings and nature. He once held an exhibition in and about his patio. Now the chapel in front of his house is found on many works.
The work of Nota consists of series. Series of chapels, series of Vases, series of flowers and series of works with cut tubes of paint. They form a dialogue with each other and seeing them in Serie makes it even more interesting than the works on its own.
During summer 2025 he will present his Basse du Geer series in the gallery.
His series Herbarium was presented in the gallery from the 22nd of august – 20 of September 2020.
He participated in 2019 at Plateau Kunst in Margraten.
In 2021 his work was presented as part of the Art Carousel in the Front Room.
Nota about the Basse du Geer series:
Since I moved to Maastricht at the beginning of this century, I regularly cycle along the Jeker to Tongeren. I have always felt that I was being absorbed into the landscape and that I was going back in time. I don’t feel this so much in the short and beautiful Dutch part of the Jeker, but especially when you cross the bridge at Kanne and end up in Wallonia, where the name changes to the Geer. There, time seems to have stood still. Although, if you look more closely, everything is mixed up.
Beautiful landscapes, a large oil tank next to a house, a beautiful old Romanesque church, a hodgepodge of houses in a street, a field of poplars, a huge dilapidated barn, a flashy modern villa, a neglected square farm, the successive villages and, of course, the Geer. Around every bend in the road, there is something different to see. The combination of beauty and ugliness is what makes this valley so appealing to me.
When I leave the Walloon part on my travels and the Geer becomes the Jeker again, much of the magic is lost. The landscape becomes more expansive and before you know it, you are in Tongeren.
In recent years, I have taken photographs of the Geer valley. The exhibition shows the first results of what I have done with them.
My work is characterised by an abstracted form of reality. This time, I have chosen paper and pastel chalk. With these, I try to convey what this valley means to me in a subtle and perhaps tender way. Variation in colour and repetition of the subject play an important role in this.
These are the first steps towards what may be a long-term project.
Works by Willibrord Nota
