One of the wonderful consequences of working with Jon Beinart on his beinArt.org project, is that I've met some very interesting people. Of those is numbered Rardy Van Soest. I was initially made aware of his existence by De Es Schwertberger, who has a number of his paintings in Rardy's collection. I then discovered that he was well known amongst the Fantastic and Visionary art community, as he is an avid art collector of this genre, and has exess of 800 works.
It came to pass that when Rardy noticed two of his favourite artists missing from beinArt.org, he made contact to enquire why. After a very long conversation about many topics associated with art and painting, his two artists were included. During this conversation I also had the opportunity to ask him about his collection. He informed me that he was in the planning stages for the building of a museum in the Netherlands, dedicated solely to Fantastic and Visionary art.
My curiosity was stirred further, so when the opportunity arrived that I was travelling to Amsterdam, I took the opportunity to contact Rardy again, and ask if I could make the trek to Utrecht to visit him and see his collection. Rardy agreed. When we met, we spent much time talking firstly, and he started introducing me to books of his favourite artists. Slowly we made our way to his collection.
What a dream to behold. We spent some hours looking through his collection. As a painter, this was a marvelous opportunity for me to see first hand, works I had only seen in books or on the internet. I could see and learn so much more about the artists techniques.
Rardy Van Soest has now published a book of his extensive art collection.
http://fantasticvisions.net/shop/books/van-soest-collection