Perhaps the best idea is to zero in on the way this Dutch artist passionately pays attention to subject matter. But first, a look at his background.
Born in 1930 into the large family of a bakery-owning couple in a Dutch village, Krikhaar at age 10 made his first piece of art after receiving watercolor paints from his mother.
She gave them as consolation to Herman after Nazi occupation forces destroyed all 40 carrier pigeons the boy was raising in his backyard. Since then, birds have become a signature motif for this nature-loving artist.
Largely self-taught in art, Krikhaar pursued painting on the side after a stint in Paris and while he was touring the globe as a KLM flight steward. All the while he was collecting ancient and contemporary art, especially work by the Cobra group of painters from Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam, several of whom became his close friends.
Next he was off to paint in the cubist style at Ibiza, long before that remote hamlet became the techno-music haven it now is in Spain's Balearic Islands. For that he used KLM earnings he had saved.
Returning to Amsterdam, Krikhaar opened an art gallery bearing his name in 1962. He displayed the art he had collected and made a point of staging solo shows that would alternate prominent artists with unknowns, a valuable practice.
All through that gallery's 26-year tenure, he kept his own artwork in the background and didn't show it. Since then, Krikhaar has become a full-time painter in the south of France, where he lives with his wife, art historian Helene Stork, a specialist in 20th-century sculpture for Christie's.
Three galleries in Holland presented solo shows by Krikhaar this spring, yet the energetic artist had no difficulty coming up with plenty of material for his West Chester show, which spans the 1980s to 2001 and is mainly watercolors.
