Peter van Straaten

"Despite the indescribable pleasure I derive from painting I prefer to think of myself as an inventor of images rather than a painter, a distinction based in part on the fact that I will always love beautiful thoughts more than I could ever love beautiful things, and also because for me there is no more romantic vision of the working self than the image of the backyard inventor, tinkering late into the suburban night in his garage, on an invention whose secrecy is as thrilling as the inventor’s private and burning faith in its potential. A craftsman is merely a skilled manipulator of things as they are, while the inventor is committed to things as they could be – to a world improved."