Ten participants and their models from all over the country and even from Germany and Belgium were today in the village hall of Altena for the North Netherlands Bodypainting Championship.
One of the participants is Ton Nizet from Roermond. “I once had a cerebral infarction and as therapy I had to do something with my hands. Then I started painting to develop fine motor skills. Later I participated in a face paint competition and that eventually became body painting. That’s how it started , actually.”
Bodypainting is certainly not easy, according to organizer Tanja Hommes. “It’s a very big challenge. You can paint something on canvas, but this is living canvas. And living canvas moves. You talk to it. It eats, it drinks, it sweats. It gets cold. It needs to go to the toilet . So there are a lot of challenges in it.”
The theme is globetrotters. “Someone paints the Northern Lights, perhaps out of a desire to go there as a globetrotter. Another paints a wolf. But you also have the house sparrow and the swallow who go around the world as globetrotters. You see your own interpretation by every painter on the theme,” continues Hommes.