His art is an inseparable part of his personality and lifestyle. It provides a distillation of his life history. Each work refers to a stage in the life of the artist and his experiences.
From a life which seemed doomed to be played out in the shadows or darkness, the artist has struggled towards the light. His expressionistic style of painting reveals the urge to manifest itself. The unconsciousness becomes the center of his works. Figurative elements rise in a suggestive way from the colors and the form of the lines. Painting for him, is a spontaneous action, in which he integrates elements of his past and present life, as thoughts, experiences, exchanges. Handwritten scripts, former drawings, child paintings, creatures half-human, half-animal make his paintings abstract-lyrical, strong and flamboyant color sets expressive and mystic. Painting is also orchestrating for Marthijn de Groot. How two dimensional the canvas may be, the artist knows how to create a lively spectacle, an overwhelming opera finale, an orgasm of paint, an apotheosis in which extremes meet.
Marthijn de Groot works as a ceramist as well. Therewith he can change his way of expression and realize three-dimensional drawings in sculptures. He does works, which he calls “walls”, ceramic bowls and abstract figures. Heaven and hell, light and dark, man and women, life and death, beauty and decay, absolute silence and terrifying screams come face to face. Painting is thinking and working in extremes.
