The following  essay was submitted in July of 2006 by Mary Cummings, Curator at the Knights of Columbus Museum in New Haven, Connecticut and is presented in its entirety with the permission of the author and the artist:

Roger Van Damme, born 1921.

By Nicholas Halko, painter, professor of Art, and Program Coordinator of Visual Arts at Gateway Community College, New Haven CT.

“What is a painter’s subject?  It is anything which jolts the painter’s mind into a tension, that only work will resolve.”-Wolf Kahn, artist.  Van Damme has been working to resolve these tensions and to perfect his craft for over sixty years.

A painterly realist, whose work is derived from his life experience and his surroundings, he is a painter of the human figure, still-lifes, and seascapes.  “Why hasn’t Roger Van Damme been seen before?” wrote Martha B. Scott, art historian, critic, and curator, in 1972.  “His beautifully handled, almost classic stilllifes and figure paintings open one’s eyes to real painting again.  As a figurative painter he deserves a place high on the list of recently acclaimed “New” realists- Philip Pearlstein, Alfred Leslie, William Bailey. Perhaps he isn’t blunt enough for the popular new current.

Whatever subject he paints-figures, interiors, or still-lifes- he has an infallible eye for light and color.  Few can fail to respond to his bizarre still-life, “The wanderers”. Ever the perfectionist in structure (“Wanderers” is composed with the rigidity of a Chardin or Cezanne still-life) he cleverly places two little groups of white-enameled mugs at oblique angles on the picture plane.  That plane is a deep green crinkled cloth with no reason for being, just as there is no reason for the deliberately distorted perspective, other than the surreal shock effect. Did the artist really see his objects this way or did he imagine them? Van Damme always leaves a question dangling in the air.” (Martha B. Scott “New Stature in New England Show, A Fairfield U. Survey of “Now” Art. Bridgeport Sunday Post, March 19, 1972.)

In 1970 he was awarded an Edward MacDowell Residence Fellowship, at the MacDowell Art Colony in New Hampshire.  In 1974 he had a one man exhibition of The Nudes at the Larcada Gallery, 23 E. 67 St. New York, NY, which prompted the art reviewer Martha B. Scott to write that “Roger Van Damme can be considered one of America’s finest painters of nudes in contemporary representational art.”(“Milford Artist’s Nudes: Idealized Intimate Scenes.” Bridgeport Sunday Post, April 14, 1974.)

In 1975, three of his big nudes were included in the invitational exhibition “Nine Connecticut Artists.”at the Hartford Atheneum, Hartford, CT; and in 1976 he was awarded the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant, a national grant, for his nudes.

In 1998 he had a Retrospective of The Nudes at the Center for the Arts, Milford Fine Arts Council, Milford, CT.  Now most of the nudes are in the permanent collection of Southern Connecticut State University, and Gateway Community College, donated by the aging artist, given away too soon, in my opinion.

Van Damme is best known for his still-life paintings of white and black enamel cups- not the type found in normal households kitchens.  The cups form a theme that has continued to persist since World War II, when in Belgium, Van Damme was severely wounded and survived mostly by drinking liquids from metal field cups.

“Van Damme creates a tense realism in gravity-defying still life paintings and drawings of cups, that sets his work apart from other realist painters.” (Washington Art Association, Washington Depot CT, April 1982.)

The cup-paintings reveal unsettling yet very human conditions.  They are Van Damme’s dramatis personae.  They are unsettling because of the element of surprise in the placement of the cups and the resulting precarious balance”  “pushes a personal variation on the subtle mystery of Giorgio Morandi and William Bailey.  The cups are arranged on a narrow shelf, with four ahead and four to the left.  By painting one in the process of falling off, Van Damme inserts an element of intrigue.” ( New Work New Haven, Artspace Gallery-Susan M. Wadsworth, Art New England, Oct/Nov. 1992).

“Vigilante” “once again presents his trademark cups in pristine calm, precisely rendered. They play havoc in precariously unbalanced impossibilities which only the artist can master again and again.  With a minimum of imagery, in a background that is almost abstract in its simplicity, the artist lets his cups float and will tilt in mid-air, defying credibility and yet giving the appearance of possibility.  This is a moody, evocative, beautiful painted work.” (Judy Birke, New Work New Haven, Artspace –New Times Connecticut, July 1992.)

In 1970 he had a one man exhibition of The Cups in the Larcada Gallery, 23 E 67 St, New York, NY; at the Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA in 1971; at the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, MD, in 1972; at the Catskill Cultural Center, Arkville, NY, in 1975; at the John O’ Rourke Gallery, 820 Madison Ave, New York, NY, in 1978; and at the Washington Art Association, Washington Depot, CT. in 1982.

“Vanitas with Three White Cups” was included in the Exhibition “Frivolity and Mortality: The tradition of Vanitas in Contemporary Painting” at the Sherry French Gallery, 41 W 57 St. New York, NY, in 1987.  This exhibition traveled through 1989 to The Silvermine Guild of Artists, New Canaan, CT; Noyes Museum, Oceanville, NJ; Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN; Valparaiso University Museum of Art, Valparaiso, IN; University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ; Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, CA; Schick Art Gallery, Skidmore College, Sarasota Springs, NY; and Tyler Art Gallery, State University of New York, Oswego, NY. In 1990, “Cups, White on Black, 1984” won the Grand Prize of the National Art Competition of Modern Maturity, juried by Susan C. Larson, Curator of the Permanent Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.

One of his cup-paintings received a Purchase Award in the 48th Annual American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY, in 1996; and in 1998 his cup-paintings were featured in the National Academy Museum’s 173rd Annual Exhibition, New York, NY.

Van Damme also painted a series of striking portraits of his paralyzed wife, Olga, whom he took care of almost single handedly for eleven years.  He had a moving exhibition of these works at Gateway Community College in 2002. “These paintings are extraordinary and must be seen,” wrote Francis Cunningham, N.A., American artist and Co-director of the New York Academy.  In her review of this exhibition, Judy Birke wrote:”…the show includes only 17 pieces by a single artist who speaks in one voice. In fact that individual voice is so personal, so single-minded, so clear and so powerful that one has difficulty finding any response to it other than a visceral one.  The subject of all the pieces is the artist’s wife, Olga, who suffered a severe stroke in 1993 that left her totally debilitated.  Suffice it to say that these paintings and drawings, so sad and so loving, speak elegantly and eloquently for themselves.  Nevertheless, one must note that Van Damme is a wonderful painter.  These images reinforce the mastery of mood, composition, tone and technique to which one has become accustomed over the course of his career.

Here, once again, Van Damme takes a single theme, an experience from his own life, and thoughtfully blends it with remarkable technique to achieve a group of works in which narrative and process become one.  The limited palette, the subtlety of tones, the rich surface textures, the references to art history both in form and substance, and the emotional punch all blend into a stirring harmony of one artist’s distinct voice.” (“In portraits, stories of artists and subjects” by Judy Birke, New Haven Register, Sunday, December 1, 2002)

Many of the paintings’ titles were derived from words spoken by Olga Van Damme, such as “Why Must I Suffer So Much?” “Why Does God Punish Me?” “What Did I Do Wrong?” “I Am a Poor Person”

Another subject dear to Van Damme ever since he moved to Woodmont forty six years ago, are his seascapes.  Critics have written about them as paintings of vast spaces and light, where every shape counts (E.M., Art News, Roger Van Damme at the Harry Salpeter Gallery, 42 East 57th Street, New York, NY, March 12-23, 1968). Roger Van Damme:” Seascapes” at the Winterhill Gallery, Hartford CT.  “His seascapes are quite fine, painted on the spot, as you might expect. One in particular charmed me for the quietude and evocative stillness that it possesses.  This, “Low Tide,” uses close tones of lightened grays, recalling the close palette of his cup-paintings.” (Jolene Goldenthal, The Hartford Courant, Sunday, February 11, 1973.)

In “Summer Landscapes” at the Munson Gallery, 33, Whitney Ave, New Haven, CT: “Roger Van Damme sets himself the difficult task of charting emptiness.  His best work is the sea viewed from a large uninhabited white porch.” ( By William Zimmer,The New York Times, Sunday, August 16, 1992.)

Reviewing the two-person show at the Kehler-Liddel Gallery in New Haven, CT, Judy Birke writes in her Sunday, July 9, 2006 review in the New Haven Register: “Van Damme is the consummate artist.  Whether painting still lives, figures, interiors or seascapes, Van Damme is a painter who knows how to paint.  It’s hard to think of many other contemporary artists as skilled at their craft as he is.  A master of tone, light and composition, Van Damme knows how to evoke mood and atmosphere, his paintings achieving a fine balance in which form, substance and process become one.  The current exhibition seems to include both recent works and those that have been around for a long time (no matter, it’s always a treat to revisit them).

Most prominent here are what have been termed the “cup paintings,” the major body of imagery Van Damme has been working on for most of his life.  The cups are a reference to the metal field cups used during World War II when, as a young man in Belgium, Van Damme was seriously wounded and survived mostly by drinking liquids from the white enamel field cups.

Grouped together in muted colors, the cups form the narrative of the paintings. Sometimes they are arranged on shelves; sometimes they float in space, precariously angled and dangled.  Floating, falling, tilting, clearly defying credibility, they nevertheless appear ultimately to find a perfect aesthetic balance.

Images like “Two White Cups Lying on Their Side,” and “War Veterans,” small paintings each composed of subtle umbers and grays, of two cups lying in classic mode on narrow shelves against simple backgrounds, possess the painterly quality and humble exquisiteness of classic 17th-century still lives, Van Damme giving due respect to the history of art. Darkly meditative, and with an understated stillness, they appear to call into play big issues of life and death, and although they are without figures, seem to suggest a contained world of all too human feelings.

“Holocaust,” a large painting, on the other hand, lets it all hang out with a palpable emotional resonance.  Here a pair of falling cups appear to wreak blood all over the canvas surface, the red spatters spilling like unstoppable tears onto the gray and red background, indicating, it seems, something of a personal release for the artist.  Some of the paintings, like “Hades,” “Erato” and “Mnemosine,” their titles references to Greek mythology, find the cups poised against a backdrop of what appears to be a crinkled cloth-like form, unsettled, tightly held in a state of forced unease, every detail carefully controlled, while another image like “Clotho,” of sunny pastel shade of gold,
salmon and light green, more reductive and more obvious looser brushwork, find a gentle sweetness, perhaps a new willingness to travel an easier and looser path.” ( “Dual show at Kehler Liddell a meeting of the “Mind Fibers” by Judy Birke, the New Haven Register, Sunday, July 9, 2006).

Roger Van Damme is a former student of the American master Edwin Dickinson, and his work has been featured in American Artist Magazine (“In Pursuit of Light: The Art of Roger Van Damme, by Nicholas Orsini, November 1984); in Artists Next Door, A Great City’s Creative Spirit, edited by Cheever Tyler, a Project for New Haven by the Partnership for Connecticut Cities, Inc. 2005, as well as other publications, and is included in numerous private and Permanent Public Collections:
The Connecticut Collection, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, CT;
The Permanent Collection of Gateway Community College, New Haven CT;
The John Slate Ely House, New Haven CT;
Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury CT;
Milford Fine Arts Council, Milford CT;
Washington County Museum, Hagerstown, MD; Williams
College Museum of Art, Williamstown MA.)

He has also taught locally at Southern Connecticut State University, and the Creative Arts Workshop in New Haven, and at Paier College of Art, in Hamden.
July, 2006

Van Damme's work is exhibited at several New Haven galleries.