Merijn van den Ende

Merijn van den Ende

My paintings are meant to be illustrations of waves

These illustrations are a result of my hobbyistic interest in physics and the recollection of my youthful days in Liberia, where I lived for almost 10 years.

Liberia is a country in West Africa, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

I lived in Monrovia, Liberia's capital, with my mother, 3 brothers, 1 sister, 6 dogs, 1 pygmy hippo and 2 cats, in a large 2 story house, with a garden bordering on the beach. My mother ran a veterinary hospital on the first floor. Practically every day my brothers and I surfed the waves opposite our house.

After my return to the Netherlands, I became interested in bird taxidermy. To make a bird look natural in it's rest position (wings folded), is a continuous challenge. The basis of any improvement in this endeavor is my growing awareness of mechanical forces, especially gravity.

It helps me to paint waves.

Merijn van den Ende (far right)

The break at Mamba Point was a left break formed by the curved outline of a rugged, rocky coast. The inside of the point had been reinforced with slabs of concrete and houses had been built all the way up to the edge of the water. . .The surf was best during the rainy season because of the wind and the direction of the swell. Most of the time we surfed in the rain, but it was never cold. We were not afraid of sharks but had to watch out for fishermen surfing in their canoes with trawling lines. Sometimes they would give us a lift back to the peak. . . If a wave could ‘turn you over two times’, it was about nine feet. It did not get bigger, but when it was on, it was a fantastic hollow wave.

Merijn Van den Ende (center) and his brothers, surfing Mamba Point, Monrovia, Liberia, in the early 1980s.

We were very young and my mother did not share our passion at all. Every time she saw us disappear in a wave she thought that she would never see us again. We would not hear of stopping it though because we simply loved to surf. Actually for me it was more than love: it was my life. I was absolutely convinced that without surfing I might as well be dead.

Van den Ende recieved his first formal artistic training at the Academy of Art, in San Francisco, in 1989. He followed this with two years of study at the Hogeschool van Kunsten (College of Art), in Kampen, the Netherlands. He furthered his education by studying taxidermy at Canandaigua College, at Canandaigua, New York, in 1998-1999. He currently lives in Delft, the Netherlands.

merijnvandenende@yahoo.com

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We were very young and my mother did not share our passion at all. Every time she saw us disappear in a wave she thought that she would never see us again. We would not hear of stopping it though because we simply loved to surf. Actually for me it was more than love: it was my life. I was absolutely convinced that without surfing I might as well be dead.
Van den Ende recieved his first formal artistic training at the Academy of Art, in San Francisco, in 1989. He followed this with two years of study at the Hogeschool van Kunsten (College of Art), in Kampen, the Netherlands. He furthered his education by studying taxidermy at Canandaigua College, at Canandaigua, New York, in 1998-1999. He currently lives in Delft, the Netherlands.