Meet Pieter Rotthier | Visual artist, music composer & sociologist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Pieter Rotthier and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Pieter, can you tell us more about your background and the role it’s played in shaping who you are today?
I currently live in Antwerp, Belgium. This is also the city in which I grew up. So since I have lived here almost all my life, it has most certainly influenced me.

I was raised here, went to school here and studied sociology at the local university. But it influenced me in other ways as well. Antwerp is a very international city with a lot of diversity, since we have an important harbor. So I get a lot of different impressions from different people, which keeps the city interesting.

It is also a city with a lot of culture and a lot of talented artists, musicians, illustrators, etc… It has also a well organised education system for adults. There are for example a few academies where you can study art at an affordable price. So after my studies, I started studying drawing art and more recently illustration. I drew all my life, but I needed this education to learn the proper techniques. This, combined with regular meetings with other local visual artists and the impressions that my city gives me, gave me the fuel to continue drawing and share my art with others.

My other creative activities also started here. Like 15 years ago I started singing in a local choir. Through the talented musicians and singers I got to know other musicians. So when corona broke out and we had to stay in our homes, I used the inspiration that they gave me to start learning to compose music myself.

And I besides that also started doing improvisation theatre here with a group of creatives,

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
My main creative activity is visual art. I draw, paint and illustrate. That’s the art in which I got some education and in which I evolved the most. I love to make portraits, draw people, city landscapes and architecture, often in a more surrealistic setting, I also try to give my drawings a kind of atmosphere or a certain emotion. I often build my drawings with association. I start with an image, a person or a object and start associating other elements around it.

Sometimes I get assignments. That people recognize me for drawings, gives me a lot of satisfaction.

Making music is still in its beginning stadium. I mostly make electronic music, but not in a specific subgenre. I am still in a learning process here, checking other people’s music, checking online tutorials about music and music production.

But both in visual art and music, the thing I enjoy the most is the process of creating. Trying out new things that eventually work is very satisfying. Sometimes I am a bit disappointed when a good work is finished.

What is also satisfying is to create things with other people, whether it is in a group’s exposition for visual art, working together on a poster, singing in a choir or improvise on stage. This gives me joy and inspiration.

I hope in my turn that I can be inspiring for other people. I know a few people who started drawing themselves after they saw my passion for it.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
In Antwerp you start in the central station, a beautiful building. It is one of the world’s most beautiful stations. From that point on you go to the city center. You can do shopping on the Meir and the streets around it. In the center you can see the old part of the city, but you have also a lot of fine restaurants and bars. The nightlife is very vivid there. You have also a lot of fine museums like MAS, Museum of fine arts, the museum of modern art (Muhka),the Red Star Line Museum that show you the life of people who in the early 20th century migrated to de US. When you visited all that, there are a lot of hidden gems in the less touristic areas, nice squares like Krugerplein and Dageraadplaats and parks like Rivierenhof and Spoor Noord.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
A lot of people deserve credits. At first off course my parents and my friends who are always supportive in what I do. They always encourage me to continue.

I also have to give credit to the teachers of the Berchem academy who taught me all the techniques for my visual art. I also have to give credit to a few people who support local visual artists by giving them a chance to expose their work, like the people from Try-angle and Dalek art gallery. They do this purely out of love for art.

Also the musicians and the singers from the choir Chor-Rus deserve a shout out. They gave me the interest in music making, a path which I am now exploring. Posting my music on SoundCloud was also a good idea. Through this platform I also got to know a lot of inspiring musicians from all over the world who are very supportive for each other. This also gives me a drive to continue.

And the last shout out I want to give is to my fellow impro players from FUS! This is a group of people with out of the box ideas and amongst them are also a lot of inspiring creatives in different domains, like musicians, visual artist, theatre artists etc…

Website: https://linktr.ee/Quickonthedrawing

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quick_on_the_drawing/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quickonthedrawing

Youtube: https://youtube.com/c/PieterRotthier

Other: SoundCloud https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/SBK58WvDn4WmjTvM9 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/artist/0D5dRS9CdchnNCgCuaVZr2?si=xuFVBHivT8u5Ji6eLNPh5g