Meet the creator

Artist · NL

Ad van den Boom is a Dutch artist working between the Netherlands and Switzerland. His work is rooted in what he calls Crealism: a way of seeing in which reality is not fixed, but shaped by the attention with which we observe it. Trees form the central thread in his work. They grow, bend, root and carry the traces of time. Like people, they respond to their surroundings. In his paintings, Van den Boom explores what often goes unnoticed: movement, change and connection. He gives trees a voice by imaginatively placing himself within them. His paintings develop slowly and organically. Some works require hundreds of hours of labour, built up through thousands of dots and layers until an image emerges from within, much like a tree grows. Alongside large-scale paintings, he also creates smaller works and black-and-white drawings composed of dots, lines and signs. After many years of commissioned creative work, Van den Boom chose to devote himself fully to his autonomous practice. In his work, image, word and silence come together not to provide answers, but to open space for other ways of seeing. He calls this Crealism. Not seeing, but being. Ad van den Boom at work in his studio.