About

The name is Raymond Teitsma, a Dutch painter born in 1981 in Utrecht, The Netherlands. I studied Illustration at the School of Visual Arts in Utrecht and spent an exchange semester studying Illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, USA. I live and work in Utrecht , the Netherlands.

A photograph, a memory, a scene from everyday life — things that feel familiar, but become strange when they are taken out of their original context. I collect these kinds of images and use them as a starting point for my paintings.

I like the tension between the ordinary and the impossible. A quiet street, a person waiting, a landscape or an object can suddenly take on a different meaning when something unexpected enters the scene. I am drawn to images that leave questions unanswered and stories that seem to have started before the painting begins.

My paintings often have the appearance of old photographs or fragments from another time. I work mostly in restrained tones, allowing the image itself to carry the atmosphere. At the same time, I deliberately introduce elements that disrupt that sense of reality — something oversized, misplaced, repeated or simply impossible.

Coming from a background in illustration, I have always been fascinated by the power of an image to suggest a story without actually telling it. In painting, I can slow that process down. I can leave things unresolved and let the image find its own logic.