Rob has always been obsessed with Johannes Vermeer.
He was often able to study Vermeer's works on site in his hometown (the Mauritshuis in The Hague).
In his early years, he simply used Vermeer's images as mere references.
In 2024, the decisive confrontation occurred when he unexpectedly encountered two iconic Vermeer paintings he never had seen in the real before in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin:
Together in one room: the Stendhal syndrome for sure....
It was then that he understood that these iconic images had to be tackled once and for all. The images haunt him and in his 2024 work they return and then disappear again. Distorted, recognizable, but transformed by Rob's hand into dreams of Aspendos, of the Eurymedon River, of Bourgane.
They are consumed and digested in homage to this infinitely great Dutch painter of the 17th century.