The sun blazes down in southern Taiwan, and Xinying is bathed in a serene, carefree atmosphere. In the workshop, a calm and confident Van der Graaf asks his young students to put gorgeous colors on their paper with their fingers and small balls. Observing their progress, Van der Graaf is full of praise: “This is an excellent painting. Children are artists by nature. If you were to enlarge this picture to 1.5 by 2 feet and frame it, it would look just like the successful works you can see exhibited in art galleries.”

Pascal van der Graaf says that sculptors gain inspiration from the past and explore creative possibilities within the boundaries of their art.

Exploring creative possibilities

In addition to teaching art, Van der Graaf goes into his workshop first thing each morning to work on a public art commission project.

He shows us his most recent origami creation: a three-­dimensional rabbit. Adept at manipulating chromatic variations, he used special pigments to produce “flip-flop” effects, making his rabbit glitter in the sun with ever-changing colors. He plans to turn this paper maquette into a full-sized public artwork made of aluminium and other metals.

Van der Graaf’s father taught him origami when he was four, and building on that base he taught himself to create paper sculptures. “I very much enjoy this creative process—the process of tinkering and pondering. I let my imagination run wild, developing the shape of each part of a work by trial and error, like walking a path. It’s a playful process, rather like what we used to do in elementary school craft classes.”

As an art teacher as well as a practicing artist, Van der Graaf believes that we have to approach each task from different perspectives in order to open up a wealth of hidden possibilities. “I don’t approve of pedagogical systems that propagate the mantra ‘I say “jump” and you say “how high?”’ My own education taught me to challenge everything my teachers said.” Van der Graaf tells us in a serious tone: “Education should help us discover what we like and create things that express what we are.”

Van der Graaf teaches children to express themselves creatively by building models.

Out of the comfort zone

“Rather than always staying in one place, I like to get the hell out of my comfort zone, to liberate myself.” For Van der Graaf, to move to Asia was to bid farewell to his comfort zone.

He traveled to Macau in 2015 because he had met Arwen Yang online. At that time Yang was an assistant professor at Macau University of Science and Tech­nology, where she taught Chinese culture.

When Van der Graaf learned that Yang was from Taiwan, the only thing about the country that came to mind was that the Transformers toys he used to play with as a child were made there. He gathered some information about Taiwan via Google, but never did he foresee that one day he would become a Taiwanese citizen.

Van der Graaf video-chatted with Yang every day. After a month he flew to Macau from the Netherlands to see her, despite having never visited Asia before. After three romantic months together, they decided to get married. Van der Graaf knew this was a gamble, but looking back, he is happy that he did it.

Yang, who says with a smile that she and Van der Graaf were head over heels in love, soon became pregnant. After their daughter, Sky, was born in late 2016, the couple decided to relocate to Taiwan.

However, moving back to Taiwan was a huge challenge for Yang. “I felt the most profound sense of loss that I have ever experienced in my life.” Yang has always distinguished herself academic­ally. Having obtained a degree in ­pharmacy from National ­Taiwan University, she went on to study for a PhD in Chinese at Peking University. It was therefore a drastic change to go from expounding on Mencius and Zhuangzi in a university classroom to becoming a penny-­pinching housewife. In order to benefit from the help of Yang’s parents, the couple decided to settle in Xinying.

Creating origami sculptures pushes the boundaries of creative freedom within the limits imposed by the medium.

Culture shock

A straightforward European who is mindful of standing up for his own rights, Van der Graaf has undergone a great deal of culture shock in Taiwan. For example, to prevent drivers from illegally parking in front of his house, he displayed a notice and drew a red line on the ground, but no one seemed to pay any heed. Eventually he realized that this was in fact a “power play.”

At first he would confront the drivers, but when he noticed that this rarely worked, he changed his tactics. He began to address those recalcitrant rule-breakers with a polite smile, whereupon they would apologize and move their cars elsewhere. To “tackle a problem with a smile” is the way to gain the upper hand in a power play.

Despite the culture shock, Van der Graaf has found in his Asian life an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Before meeting Yang, he had actually been experi­encing artist’s block. Yang takes the mickey out of him: “He’d had creative constipation for ages.”

Van der Graaf was awarded stipends by the Nether­lands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture in 2003, 2004, and 2008. He says that this is something of a lottery for emerging artists, but he won the award three times, and his works have entered the collections of galleries such as the Museum Belvédère in the Netherlands. An early achiever, Van der Graaf accomp­lished a series of “Flower Pieces,” highlighting floral resplendence and decay. These paintings sold well, but he found them dull.

Pascal Van der Graaf has settled in Tainan with his Taiwanese wife, Arwen Yang.

Life’s true colors

What inspires Van der Graaf here in Asia is not only love but also the rich vein of a culture so different from his own. He gains much wisdom from attending his wife’s workshop on Laozi’s Tao Te Ching, even though he reads this Taoist classic in English. “Many Westerners are captivated by Star Wars,” Van der Graaf says. “In these films, what the director George Lucas emphasizes as ‘the Force’ actually coincides with the ‘tao’ in the Tao Te Ching. ‘Tao’ is manifested in our daily lives. For ­example, Chapter 2 of the Tao Te Ching elucidates the concept of opposites: ‘If everyone knows why beauty is beautiful, ugliness must already exist; if everyone knows why goodness is good, evil must also exist.’ This is unlike the idea prevalent in Western civilization that good and evil cannot coexist. Laozi’s words make a lot of sense. They fully tally with my life experience.”

No longer short of inspiration, Van der Graaf not only pursues his own creative activities but also offers artistic advice to Yang, who has found her avocation in renovating and refurbishing old homes. His role is like that of Yoda, the legendary Jedi master in Star Wars. Yang and Van der Graaf have joined forces to apply for public art project funding: she wrote the proposal, and he concentrates on creating the artworks. Husband and wife now work closely together, reminding us of Laozi’s adage: “Sound and voice harmonize with each other, front and rear follow each other.”

Van der Graaf is now a Taiwanese citizen. His wife and father-in-law have given him a Chinese name: Yang Wenzhi. Van der Graaf, who enjoys spending time with his lovely son and daughter as well as creating artworks, says: “Moving to Taiwan is the best choice I’ve ever made.”        

Van der Graaf has prepared a cosy place in Taiwan for his parents to stay in. The wall is decorated with his father-in-law’s abacuses.

The photo on the right shows Van der Graaf as an infant, with his elder brother. His parents and brother are shown on the left. His mother was pregnant with him when this latter photo was taken.

Entitled Shining Stars of Macau, this painting is part of a series of seascapes that Van der Graaf created in Macau.

The Van der Graafs’ daughter, Sky, speaks Dutch, English, Mandarin, and Taiwanese and enjoys creating art with her father.

Van der Graaf used origami and “flip-flop” pigments to create this owl.