I am Ben Claassen, from Haarlem the Netherlands and I dropped all art classes in high school as soon as I could… But in my defense, I didn’t have a very inspiring teacher back then…
But I did spend quite some time in my teenage years drawing and painting. But then I moved out of my parents house and I started to work and have much less time on my hands. Then a wife, a house with lots of things to do, and then 2 kids to top it off.
But in 2024 I decided I to buy a canvas and paint something for the living room. That was the spark I needed to pick up painting again. I’ve been painting and drawing some things since then and I wanted to present them here to the world. Just because I can.
I do get the question often: “Why do you sign with 3C? What is that?”.
Well it’s simply my initials but I left out the vertical part of the ‘B’, because then it is more in balance with the curved C next to it… As you can see I’ve done that since I was 15 or so and I still like it as a simple and strong signature.
Next to that it also kind of summarizes 3 elements that I find important in my work.