Inside artist Ton Pret's wonder-filled world: 'My wife tells me I never grow up'

The Dutch artist's signature uplifting style can be seen in museums, on Michael Kors bags and even adorning Converse shoes

The 'Magic Unicorn' by Ton Pret. Courtesy Ton Pret

The playful, exaggerated architecture around the Zaandam station street almost sets the scene for a visit to Ton Pret’s studio. Postmodern buildings in primary colours sit on top of each other here in the heart of this historic port city north of Amsterdam. Instantly recognisable and at odds with the red brickwork that is more usual across the Netherlands, these buildings inspire a sense of childlike wonder that is only exacerbated on arrival at the artist’s premises.

Stepping into Pret’s studio is like stumbling into a Mardi Gras parade. Riotous colours and flamboyant characters greet you at every turn, dancing along the walls and across the room, slithering into chairs and skipping merrily on to shoes, bags and even mannequins. Every single piece encourages you to stop and engage: here a conversation, there a revelation, everywhere a spontaneous giggle.

“I am a child,” Pret says. “An adult child, perhaps, but a child nevertheless.” Although he’s 62, he certainly has the energy of Peter Pan, inexhaustibly leading me around the different rooms within his sprawling studio, pointing out the latest characters in his work and telling me about new commissions, all in rapid-fire Dutch.

“I can enjoy small things. Even my wife tells me I never grow up. And she likes it, she has no problem with it,” he says, in English this time, as we finally take a seat beside a flight of stairs that lead down to a larger, street-level gallery space. Even when he’s unwinding at home after a morning’s work at the studio, he can spend hours playing with tiny cars.

Perhaps that’s why Pret’s work is so popular with collectors looking for something unique. Footballer Wesley Sneijder and former Dutch national football coach Ronald Koeman have invested in his work, as have several Formula One drivers. For a show with Queen’s lead guitarist Brian May, French guitarist Jean-Pierre Danel, Steve Lukather of American band Toto and Hank Marvin of British band The Shadows, Pret brought his signature characters to the Fender Stratocaster guitar. He has been commissioned to paint Ferraris, Philippe Starck chairs, Louis Vuitton and Michael Kors bags, stratospheric heels for a number of designer brands and, right on trend with the current streetwear favourite, Converse shoes.

His work has also been exhibited at the Rijksmuseum, the museum of the Netherlands in Amsterdam; the Louvre Museum in Paris; the Dutch Leather and Shoe Museum in Waalwijk; and the Kunsthal art museum in Rotterdam. Next summer, a new work goes on show as part of the permanent collection of the Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum in Bratislava, Slovakia, after an opening planned for 2021 was rescheduled because of the coronavirus outbreak. And among Pret's corporate buyers are supermarket chains, construction and oil companies.

Not bad for a former insurance salesman who threw it all in at the age of 42 to become a painter again. Pret still remembers when his art was dismissed when he was 11. “The teacher told me the colours clashed too much, the creatures didn’t work… And now, people like it. No one says the colours don’t match.”

On the contrary, his work has been called a 21st-century response to the CoBrA movement, a post-war avant-garde style that emphasised the process over the product. Graffiti, folkloric and primitive elements featured prominently within the works of European artists such as Karel Appel, Corneille and Asger Jorn, something Pret recognises. “The CoBrA movement turned against the academic rules of realism and experimented a lot. So yes, that also sounds like me,” he says with a shrug.

When Pret quit his job and the 15-hour days that came with it, during what he doesn’t deny was a midlife crisis, he made a deal with his wife: he’d give his art a year and if it didn’t work out, he’d start another company.

His next step was to head down to a local discount store and buy canvases and paints. He put that first, single-coat work under his arm and walked into an Amsterdam gallery on spec. Not only did they agree to hang that lone painting, but it soon sold, earning him €750 ($890) and a visit from an art critic, who promptly took Pret under his wing.

“I had this feeling that I needed art instruction, that I had to come from the academy – until an artist in the studio next to me said that Elvis and The Beatles were also largely self-taught musicians,” he says. “Then, when more work started selling, other artists started saying I was lucky, that I had the critics’ backing, that I was commercial.

“But now I see my success as a kind of triumph over everyone who said I wasn’t an artist.”

Close to 80 per cent of his work is done by commission. His canvases begin at about €5,000 ($6,069), and buyers may have to wait for more than a year before Pret delivers on a job. In addition, because he doesn’t take an advance of any kind, he paints whatever takes his fancy. Buyers are then free to decline the work, although that rarely happens, even if he doesn’t always stay on message.

“Freedom is most important to me. I could work double the number of hours per day [he’s only at his studio from 8am to 3pm] to produce something in two weeks. Money’s not important – whatever they’re willing to pay. Otherwise, I’m back where I started.”

He says he doesn't take notes when being commissioned, nor does he make any sketches. What he carries into a job is a sense of the client and the subject matter. That explains paintings such as Jet Set, for a horse-mad client, and I Claudia, which is set against a cathedral in Milan, for a resident of the Italian city.

“With my art, I transform subjects, objects, themes, issues, political aspects and actually everything in normal life, into my spontaneous, uninhibited view of life – the world of my fantasy. I give people a view inside my head and hope they will also be caught by these positive vibes,” he explains.

He laughs about the time a Dutch client asked him to paint whatever he wanted, with one caveat – Pret could not use the colour orange, because the client hated it. Sure enough, when Pret delivered the finished piece, one-third of the canvas was covered in bright orange.

“My wife said: ‘Why are you doing something so stupid? I said: ‘But it has to be orange. So, I go to the client and unzip the carrier for the canvas, and the client says: ‘It’s orange… But I love it.’”

Pret says he will paint on anything, except other artworks, such as sculptures. Indeed, a number of mannequins sit around his studio, there’s a moment where you have to duck to avoid a papier-mache plane, and several footballs sit on his worktable (he won’t say who they’re for). The nature of his pieces also frees up buyers to play with how they’re exhibited: one client commissioned a pair of high heels that he placed by his feet under a glass office desk, jolting visitors into a double take.

But perhaps the most remarkable section of Pret’s oeuvre are the works that show up organically and unannounced. The artist shows me a bright, almost neon, green and scarlet canvas that seems to depict a fish eating a crab. Turned on its side, I can just make out – after I’m told – the contours of a man’s head and his jacket and tie. Originally a dark, emotional response to the death of his father, Pret painted over the work as a way of coping with his grief. “I still have problems with his death,” he says. “It’s the only negative painting I’ve ever done. So, I turned it around to try to make a positive out of a negative.”

Another piece, Magic Unicorn, is inspired by his idea of Dubai and Abu Dhabi (he won't get on a plane to visit, so his impressions have been picked up from afar). "You can see the unicorn as an individual, trying to live and survive in those hyper-modern cities in the middle of a desert country," he says.

“Cities like Abu Dhabi and Dubai can be overwhelming as an individual and that’s kind of a magical feeling. Instead of skyscrapers, our unicorn is surrounded by even more architecturally impressive pyramids, while the funnel symbolises the oases that are Abu Dhabi and Dubai.”

Exaggerated, larger-than-life, incredulous – Ton Pret’s art certainly speaks straight to the heart of the UAE experience.