Herman Kolker was born in 1951 in Erica. He was educated at the Fine Arts Academy “Minerva” in the City of Groningen from 1972 until 1978.

Herman Kolker has a great command of the following techniques.

• With regard to painting: oilpainting and working with tempera, as well as with watercolours.
• Moreover, regarding the art of drawing, he is a master when using the pencil, charcoal, as well as ink.
• As to the graphic arts, he is good in etching, and using the dry etching point, as well as in designing lithographs.
• Furthermore he likes to create monumental paintings in close relation to an architectural setting.

Herman Kolker, as painter, is particularly fascinated by the impact of man on landscapes. And specially by the traces left over there by man. Traces, such as ashes, furrows, peat - grounds, dykes, mud - flats , in short landscapes created by human hands.
In his paintings he abstracts the forms of such landscapes in such a way that only the quintessential remains. He deletes irrelevant details.

‘I try to evoke an atmosphere of light and space, which I deem peculiar to a certain type of landscape and where one may recognize the important role of the recognition of its proper own identity.’