Cell Portraits
A holding cell is a claustrophobic space containing only a bench to sit on. The place is quiet, but the walls and door are full of screaming graffiti. Here inmates of the Bijlmerbajes prison in Amsterdam awaited their trial or interrogation. Their cries of despair are still on the doors and walls. This was the setting Athmer chose for a series of portraits of people of interest to the painter.
The large canvases (100cm by 100cm) only just fit in the cell. In the course of this work, he himself spent nearly three hundred hours in the cell.
Athmer left those portrayed free to relate to the small space as they saw fit – the pose came naturally. Once in the cell, one automatically begins to imagine what it is like to be stuck here – and how valuable our freedom actually is.
He painted only by direct observation – so no photographs were taken. In a few cases he painted the background (the cell) as it was, but mostly the background came about intuitively, in response to the person and the situation.
The result is a colorful series of works about deprivation of liberty, about waiting, as well as aura and fantasy. With this series, Athmer joins a tradition of painters who relate to the world through portraits of people in their own circle, such as his favorite painters Alice Neel and David Hockney.
