In his series Rose Garden - works shown publicly for the first time at Art Island - De Kok does not paint roses. What he paints is the experience of the rose garden. Ever since 2016, De Kok has been examining to what extent he can reduce a landscape to an abstract concept: clouds, mountains, lakes, meadows, roads, buildings and flowers emerge as blocks of colours and patches of paint. Brilliant shades of colours and brush strokes that flow and swirl and thus convey a picture of mountains, valleys and rivers. The landscape is being converted into paint.