I was born on February 6th, 1934 in the centre of Antwerp and grew up in the Jacob Jordaens House in the ‘Reyndersstraat’. Was it then and there that the spirit of Antwerp’s eternally third grand Painter got a grip on me? Who can tell? But there is a greater probability it came through the genes of my ancestors. Yes, my father had many artistic qualities, he drew, painted, played music en wrote poems. Like his father, my grandfather, he was a restorer of objets d’art and a decorator of organs.

The real hart of the Van Campen family was located in one of the oldest parts of Antwerp, the ‘Stoofstraat’ 14. My grandfather lived there with his wife and 6 children. His studio was there too and I remember my father making puppets in the cellar for the famous Royal Puppet Theatre, Van Campen. As a child I could not get enough of that place.
I admired my grandfather and my father’s craftsmanship, as they restored fine china and old paintings, carved puppets and brought them to life, made music and painted large canvasses. I was the lucky one, who could observe and had this idyllic youth.
 
But live could be difficult too. My parents had 5 children, two girls before me and two more boys after me. I was in the good middle position with three women pampering me and I was definitely the boss over my younger brothers.
My grand-father on my mother’s side was overseer at the Jacob Jordaens House and driver of the sturdy horses that pulled the Nation carriages from and to the harbour. For me accompanying him was a great opportunity to get to know and love the port of Antwerp.

With my father I visited many museums and art exhibitions. He passed his unlimited
admiration over the Flemish art on to me. His absolute idol was Peter Paul Rubens, the great, the greatest of all! I listened to the fantastic stories about the artist’s travels, his visits to all the Courts of Europe, how he had over one hundred assistant-painters in his studio and listened to lectures in Latin while painting.

My father soon noted my interest in colours, lines and paint. I enjoyed drawing. I copied every picture I could get my hands on. My first pencil drawings probably date from the age of 6, just before going to elementary school.
Talking of education, I completed my secondary school at two colleges, St-Louis and St-Norbert and was not a really brilliant pupil. I only excelled in drawing, calligraphic-writing, composition and declamation.

I attended the famous Artistic Crafts School in the Londenstraat.
I was hired as a trainee by a famous jewelry store and manufacturer. I enjoyed the initiation by highly skilled craftsmen, into this field of art. But, as the inhabitants of Albion say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating! I would soon find that out and it would stick with me for the rest of my life. I had to experience the less interesting sides of starting as a trainee; I was the official errand-boy, good for all of the less interesting jobs. But I am still grateful to the other craftsmen for everything they taught me and for the beautiful things I discovered. I also made some really good designs and managed to impress some French buyers visiting the workplace. They offered me a job in Paris, but I was too young to consider this.

Painting was always my true ambition. While attending secondary education I also fol_lowed art classes. My family was not really supportive of this initiative. They knew out of experience that the life of an artist is a hard one. In those days, when I was 14 years old, artists were considered poor devils, paupers, drunks and philanderers.
Despite all this I managed to be accepted at the Royal Art Academy of Antwerp. Officially I was too young but my sketches were good enough to get me in to the evening classes.
Isidoor Opsomer, great painter of portraits and landscapes was just being replaced by Julien Creytens. So I just missed to be his pupil, but I still admire his work. It was with my elder sister that I attended the evening classes, three times a week for two hours from 6 to 8 pm. At the beginning I was not so excited, because I had to start from the very beginning and I thought I knew it all. I learned to draw on large sheets provided by the Academia, a local art shop, at 3 Belgian francs a piece, with charcoal, plummet, and eraser. Those were the ingredients. At first plaster blocks, perspective and scale exercises, then torsos, ornaments and Greek sculptures. The famous drawer and etcher Professor Jacques Gorus was my teacher. He was a perfectionist and a great pedagogue, who taught me so much! Later when I had to fulfil my military service duties as a corporal - no less than 18 months plus 8 days for bad behaviour - I had to think of him while decorating the Officer’s ‘mess’ with a mural of the Belgian Provinces and the construction of scale models of the Air Force base.

Having completed my military service, a waste of time, no doubt, I wondered what to do with my artistic career? It was at a loss. I had to go in search of a stable profes_sion because I had met Lisette, my wife and we were starting a family. An uncle proposed me a job in an electrical and mechanical ships repair company. I always liked to take up a new challenge and this job brought me close to ships and the harbour, origin of my obsession with ships, no doubt. But soon, I was to experience another change in occupation, when under influence of my wife’s family we started with a commercial activity. Initially our business was successful, but not for long. We ended up losing a lot of money.
Despite these busy and dark years, during witch we moved houses a lot, I kept painting as often as I could. When we moved to Schoten with our four children, three daughters and a son, I managed to get my own studio. I also continued my education at the Academy of Schoten, encouraged by good tutors like Herman Cornelis, Rik Bettens and Sonja Rosalia Bauters. I developed a good relationship with the impressive Albert De Deken, we admired the same artists and had the same vision on style. We only differed on the amount of paint applied on a canvas, Albert liked to apply it in thick layers,
I always tried to keep it very thin. He had his share of misery in his life and this made me reflect in a more relative way over my own misfortunes.
In 1980 we sold our house in Schoten and came back to our roots, the centre of Antwerp. At first we occupied an apartment in the house of my friend and colleague, AndrÈ Goezu in the picturesque ‘Leguit ‘, the middle of the red district. Later we moved to our current apartment in the ‘Lange Nieuwstraat’. A place large enough to entertain our four children, their partners and our nine grand-children. My studio is adjacent to the apartment and rather large, and since 25 years my main occupation is now that of artist-painter. I can look back on many expositions in Belgium and abroad, not all successes, but I am happy to be able to express myself as a painter every day.

At the age of 65, I got interested in sculptures and realised I was missing a third dimension. So I returned to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts as a sculptor student and explored all the possibilities of materials like clay, wax and plaster. The Polish Maria Talaga was my teacher for 3 years. I am very grateful to her and also to people like Professor Marcel van Jole, the energetic and always well-dresses Nestor, the late Remi de Cnodder, Jan Stalmans, Ernest van Buynder, Frans Boenders who wrote poems to my watercolours, many influential people in public organisations and private companies. Gallery owners in Belgium and abroad, journalists and agents.
I also want to express my gratitude to:

Members of my family, my children, their partners and grand-children; Admirers of my artwork, my pupils, all my tutors and all artists that inspired me; Graphic-designer Caroll Cahill and her husband Randy, Karen and Ed Edelmann, my good friend ‘sixteenth
century’ painter Eddy Stevens and his very contemporary wife Sophie, and the late Walter Hechtermans.

Thank you to everyone who was involved in the realisation of this art book: Carine Demeter, for her dedication and the excellent photography; my publisher, BAI, and especially General Manager and Art Historicist, Kathleen Borms and her impressive team of professionals.

And last but not least, my special thanks to Danielle, widow of my good friend the late Lutz Hirzel, she put me on my autobiographic speaker’s pulpit and was together with my daughter Minneke, her husband Erwin and my wife Lisette the driving force in the realisation of this art book.

As an encouragement to all future artists, I would advise you to cherish and nourish your talent and dream, explore all classic sources, avoid trends and study foreign cultures and civilisations. Grow as an artist, not solely for your own benefit, but as a form of spiritual discipline.

Jef