Chris Lanooy

Chris Lanooy treated his studio like a workshop, mixing paint with a trowel and letting colors run thick like wet cement. He never left home, he lived and worked in the same brick house in Zwolle, Netherlands, where he grew up, yet his thick, gritty still lifes feel like they stepped out of a different century. Look up his 1912 oil Still Life with Copper Pot and you’ll see what he did with everyday objects: they sit heavy, almost breathing, as if you could reach in and touch the dust on the table.