Joost Verhagen

Save Haven 7 - 21st Century Contemporary landscape painting

2025

Joost Verhagen has been drawing since a very young age—a natural path for someone raised in a family of art teachers and designers who encouraged his creative talent. As a child, he was deeply fascinated by the vast harbor of Rotterdam, where his grandparents lived. The skyline, ships, refineries, and terminals left a lasting impression on him. On large A3 sheets, he created pencil drawings of imaginary cityscapes and skylines inspired by these monumental industrial scenes. Although studying at the art academy in Rotterdam seemed like the obvious next step, the program did not meet his expectations, and he instead pursued a career in the real estate sector. Yet the desire to create art never disappeared. After traveling through Australia as a backpacker in his youth, Verhagen decided to emigrate there and spent several years working in infrastructure projects in the Outback. The rugged, expansive landscapes made a profound impression on him and continued to resonate long after his return to Europe. Back home, he once again picked up pencil, paper, and brushes, eventually enrolling at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, where he studied classical painting and graduated in 2019. Today, Joost Verhagen is a full-time painter based in Eindhoven. His contemporary landscapes are collected worldwide, and his work has been exhibited in the Netherlands, Belgium, and India. In April 2021, he was named “Artist of the Month” by Online Gallery. Verhagen’s work is a continuous exploration of the modern landscape. Using his iPhone camera, he captures scenes that can be transformed from photograph to canvas. Rooted in realism, his paintings evolve into works that are often surreal, atmospheric, or subtly alienating. Working with simple tools—primarily brush, palette knife, and acrylic paint on linen—he seeks to transform ordinary imagery into something compelling and unexpected. For Verhagen, representation comes first. While principles such as the Golden Ratio remain important, they are never the sole path to the final composition. His paintings often balance on the edge between realism and abstraction, where exaggeration becomes a deliberate artistic choice. In color, everything is possible—from luminous brightness to deep shadow. Though his subjects may initially appear stark or desolate, they are never without hope. He is especially drawn to abandoned or overlooked places, where he finds authenticity in forms and structures untouched by artificial perfection. As he explains: “At first glance, my subjects may seem quiet, dull, or even uninspiring. But they are not hopeless—things are happening. Dynamism and progress are always possible.” Verhagen prefers to work on large-scale linen canvases, often exceeding one square meter, pinned directly to the wall before being stretched onto a frame. This process allows him the freedom to adjust dimensions as the painting develops. Alongside his monumental landscapes, he also creates smaller landscape studies and portraits, in which realism likewise dissolves into abstraction.