"All my work was there, the exhibitions I was preparing, my etching press, everything. My whole life as an artist was gone."
In Helmond, Esther talks to Bert Loerakker in his studio. Dichotomy is a concept that painter Bert Loerakker encounters again and again. The Catholic upbringing of his Protestant father, the family he grew up in. "I was thrown into the wrong nest," he tells himself. But also dichotomy in his work, for in it lies both Claude Monet and Piet Mondrian. He has always been stubborn, has not let anyone dictate which way he should go with his work. Not even, as he calls them, by the big egos of the art world. Then it was 2008 and a fire destroyed his entire studio and everything in it and he desperately needed that stubbornness.
"My first reaction was, 'I'm not going to let myself get crushed,'" he said.
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