Henk Pander has lived in Portland, Oregon, for 45 years but describes
himself as a "reluctant immigrant" from his native Holland. He has
maintained a cultural double vision. He records and interprets American
technology, materialism, topography, and disaster in paintings and
drawings that radically revise aspects of traditional Dutch painting in
order to make hard-hitting American art. At the same time, he frequently
paints specifically European scenes and subjects.
His painted narratives range from memories of Nazi-occupied Holland, to
a conflation of the American West with Deep Space, to the burning of the
New Carissa off the Oregon coast. Combining personal and art historical
memory with the subject matter of modern life, Pander creates works that
are profound in their seriousness, dramatic intensity, and expressive
power.