Paintings 

 René de Rooze is an artist for whom painting is an essential part of his creative work. He graduated from the ABK Minerva with material paintings, a technique in which texture and material play a central role. This fascination with the tactile and the use of different materials remained characteristic of his work, even as he developed from abstract expressionism to a more geometric austerity, and later to explorations within architectural contexts.

During the first twenty years of his career, his works often referred to landscapes, an influence that came partly from his many travels, which he continues to this day. However, as his work became more austere, he began to focus on the fundamental questions of painting, such as the application of color and the creation of structure on canvas. During this period, an architectural component in his work also began to play an important role. He was inspired by classical maps of cities and temples, and translated them by placing the different parts of a blueprint on various canvases and joining them together.

Since 2007, there has been a visible development in his work in which colour, coincidence and empty, indeterminate spaces play an important role. De Rooze abandons as many fixed rules as possible and returns to a "plaisir de paintre" (the pleasure of painting).

From 2016 onwards, De Rooze creates the series "Abstract Galaxis Coincidentia Portraits", in which he pays tribute to his muses, women from India, Iran and Italy. These portraits are not literal renderings but rather interpretations that depict an interaction between model and painter. His experience in the former Dutch New Guinea and the encounter with Indische and Indonesian culture, imbued with mysticism and spirituality such as Goena Goena, may have had an unconscious influence on his work. The influences of his Indonesian and Dutch aunts, who shared a bond with the mystical, provided a basis for his abstract portraits. 

These works are translated into "color fields", in which he combines colorful touches of acrylic paint and oil paint. By using spatulas, squeegees or by pouring paint, De Rooze creates spots of color that embody the character of the person depicted. He describes this unique approach as Abstract Romanticism, a style in which emotion and color meet.