Picture taken from the "DREAM SONG" audio solo project


Welcome to this website. I'm Marius Schrader. Artist, composer and Private Equity Investor. I juggle these different talents. Once in a while I drop one, only to pick it up later. But lately I'm doing fine with all together. Soon, I will add writing, because that's another talent I'd like to develop. But for now these disciplines take up a lot of my time. Most of the day and bits of my night. I Have a family too, so I try to improve time management too.

Painting is now on a very specific and delicate level for me. I started out as a professional painter after I studied and finished the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 1984. The work I made was big and overwhelming back then. I was painting robust and strong human bodies interacting, struggling and fighting as in renaissance compositions by da Vinci and Botticelli. Many years later I had stopped the arrogant, big white gallery wall, high visual impact, easy to consume, pop art, conceptual state of mind, and pointed my focus to a more modest approach. Instead of attention for the reaction of the spectators and their approval in the back of my mind, I started to develop more focus for the process of painting itself. This process and shift in direction resulted in a mild aversion toward conceptual art. I sold a pretty big conceptual art collection. And I threw away all the work I had made, although almost every art show I did was sold out.

I waited a few years to give time the opportunity to alter and mould my personality. And when I returned to painting again I wanted to start out small and modest and work in the classical and traditional way. More in line with the methods that classical artists used for centuries. The smaller size fruit still life painting series I made then were more appropriate to address the change in that direction. Later on I made a serie of nature studies. On 35 X 25 cm panels. Now I'm still studying. And I paint after Nature. Especially trees and leaves. Beauty of Nature can be found on very different levels and spheres. Nature's beauty is not only to be found in colourful flowers but sometimes even more striking in a seemingly meaningless, everyday, simple, normal composition of a treebranche with green leaves on it. In the end I finally try to make something very beautiful. While enjoying the process. Then I know that accompanied words and theories are unnecessary. The observer (including the artist self) can not be fooled when the truth and beauty will communicate with the subconsciousness. It has been a fullfilling and purifiyng process and the evolution I went through has been inspiring.

People who watch true and beautiful art automatically open up to the level of inspiration and consciousness layered in the perceived work. The observing audience will reflect and realize that beauty is truth and speaks for itself. This audience (including the painter) enjoying the paintings is possibly not directly capable to communicate what it exactly is in the painting that touches them on an emotional subconscious level, and the truly inspired artist will also not be able to explain why the painting has this extra layer or level of beauty. Maybe it is from a higher level of unexplainable inspiration. That alone would be priceless and is one criteria that can be used to shift outstanding artists from mediocre collegues. If the price of a conceptual work of art by Damian Hirst is higher than a Rembrandt it is not because of the beauty but because of the 8,601 diamonds in a platinum cast of an 18th century skull. It is an unconcsious act toward tenderness to show a diamond skull mindgame amidst the very sensitive work of the Dutch Master painters in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

In my opinion the most perfect art is already brought to Earth centuries ago. Anthony van Dyck, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Gustave Doré and Vermeer. The same with music. Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. Among other master composers. In philosophy Erasmus, Socrates, Plato, and Dante. In science it was Edison and Einstein amongst others and yet a lot more genius to come in that discipline... Conceptual art is dying, but sophisticated intellectuals are still buying. In the meantime millions of artlovers all over the world just stopped tracking the latest intellectuals conceptual art developements. It became just too much a product of the mind. Rembrandt propheted long before modern art evolved that'Everything painted not after nature is to be considered suspect'. So Rothko, De Kooning, Appel, Picasso and all abstract and dripping paintings might end up on the trash pile. Just like my early work did. In the future finally all art lovers will take off their blindfold and really start to see and even more important feel again what true art is about... One could conclude that it is better to enjoy the talents of a falsifier with the talent to copy old master paintings than to be trapped into the hard money game of conceptual art. As a modern spectator one should be aware of this modern art trap. Please don't be fooled. Be aware of the talent level of the painter. A trained eye and a sensitive person can tell the difference. There are just a few that will reach unearthy consciousness in traditional painting. All other artists should consider doing other work. These views may be explicit to some, but one can sense that the time is near to put recent art development into new perspective.