painting studio Archives - Ben Lustenhouwer

My selfmade palette-drawer cabinet on wheels

I am an avid do-it-yourselfer. Nothing more fun than tinkering around. (Being the handyman is a Lustenhouwer family aberration.) Big things like an entire studio or small things such as a colour-checker , I always enjoy the inventing and making. I’ve always had a reasonably resourced carpentry workshop. My wife Helma had, until recently, a well-equipped metal workshop at her disposal. So we could always make what we wanted. One of the pieces of furniture in my studio which has served me well through the years is my palette-drawer cabinet on wheels. Designed using a small office drawer of metal, I welded a structure around it and made wheels underneath. The thing is over thirty years old but is still my “piece de resistance”. Continue reading “Portrait painting and tinkering”

As a young child I knew what I wanted to be. Not a fireman or a pilot. I wanted to be a carpenter. My neighbour was a carpenter and it seemed to me the best job in the world. When I told this to my mother one day, she replied literally, “No, Ben, you can do more.” However, I wanted nothing else. With my very first pocket money I bought a bag of brand new nails at the hardware store. I had seen my dad always dabbling with these bent, rusty things that needed to be straightened. All that fiddling, not my thing. No. I had made up my mind. I wanted to tackle things rigorous from the start. But… I did not become a carpenter.

Eventually I went into art, portrait painting. And devotedly. It’s come to dominate my life as I wrote you last week. But besides painting I did however teach myself carpentry as a hobby. Once in Spain, I got the opportunity to build my own studio. And I seized this chance with both hands. From the first construction drawings to the building itself. The masonry, the welding work, the plumbing, the electricity, and of course the carpentry, everything done by myself, albeit with the help of my wife. It has become a perfect studio and a wonderful workplace. That was fifteen years ago. Recently we moved to an other place and I work in a different studio now. Strangely enough I don´t miss my old studio. Maybe the building process itself was more important than the finished result (traveling is better than arriving, so it often goes). Continue reading “Mum, I wanna be a carpenter!”