Jan Giliam
Jan Giliam is a visual artist based in Amsterdam. He makes drawings, glass works and paintings. No sketch, no plan. Where classical training starts with an idea and works toward a result, Giliam starts with the material and lets the idea catch up. He picks up a used window pane, or shards from colour panels he fuses and then deliberately drops. He cuts the glass to the millimeter, then surrenders to the heat of the kiln. The glass turns liquid. Form and texture emerge on their own.
His work is not a solo enterprise. His ongoing collaboration with Rik Lina began in CAPA (Collective Automatic Painting Amsterdam); over the years the group merged into the Cabo Mondego Section of Portuguese Surrealism, a collective of poets and visual artists he still works with today. Together they focus on automatic drawing and painting. It is not about consensus, but about the tension between autonomy and surrender to the process.
That surrealist approach also shapes how he titles his work. The titles of these drawings are randomly paired with the drawings, selected from a collection of over 330 phrases: gathered newspaper headlines and self-composed fragments. Chance reveals connections that deliberate choice would never find.
Alongside his artistic practice, Giliam works as a self-employed coach for young people with autism or complex medical conditions. He supports them in the transition from special education towards a next step: further study, work, or exploring possible directions from home. His approach is informed by présence philosophy (being present without a fixed agenda) and by the artist’s familiarity with uncertainty: no fixed methods, but space to discover together.
The two worlds feed each other. Authenticity from the young people flows into the studio. The freedom and experimentation of the studio might show the young people what else is possible.
Giliam studied Visual Arts, Pedagogy and Mathematics in Amsterdam. Later he learned glass fusion at the Bohle Glass Academy in Germany and took private lessons with glass artist Bert Grotjohann. But his real education is the work itself: making, failing, discovering, continuing, every day.
About his work he says: “Ensuing gestures and colour choices determine the images that emerge. I work in an écriture automatique, transmitting the impulse of the moment. When drawing a line, I follow the process. I let the line transform.”
For inquiries: info@jangiliam.nl
