Niels Smits van Burgst gained recognition as a contemporary genre-painter: crafting intimate yet opaque scenes of his friends, studio visitors, holidaying adolescents surrounded by chaos and empty beer bottles, his explosive brushwork and loose treatment created an atmosphere of possibility and roulette wheel chance.
In his recent works, Niels finds that same potential in the liminal spaces of the morning commute, travellers moving together in isolation, the narrative and pictorial focus dissolving. We see a painter searching for what cannot be resolved and what cannot be grasped.
Niels Smits van Burgst (Maassluis, 1970) graduated from the Royal Academy of Art (The Hague, 1993). His paintings have been exhibited in various museums and galleries and are included in collections worldwide.