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Monday, 11 May 2020

Interview Samuel Dejong AD 22-04-2020

Interview by
Gijs Kool

Surgeon De Jong (48) puts away scalpel and chooses life as an artist
Surgeon Samuel de Jong decided to focus entirely on the arts and leave the scalpels behind. Now he uses his surgical precision to recreate insects and point out the beauty that lies in the smallest of things. His work will be on display at Galerie Sille in Oudewater for the next few months.

When Samuel de Jong finishes the “teeny precision work” by recreating and assembling full-size insects, the result is indispensable to the eye: gold-colored butterflies, beetles, beetles or moths. The until recently oncological surgeon from Amsterdam attaches them to yellow, red and blue panels or lets them “swarm” on wood from Spanish olive trees.

Samuel de Jong at one of his works, in background Tamara Sille of Galerie Sille. Photo: © Rianne den Balvert.

Animated
When I applied, there were always about thirty or forty super-qualified people ahead of me

Samuel de Jong
Art drew him throughout his life, but at 20, the medical world sucked him in when he was accepted to study medicine. And so ended the boy who early on was busy with brushes at the operating table cutting away cancer.

The classic Erik and the Little Book of Insects, might as well have been called “Samuel and the Little Book of Insects,” so mesmerized was he as a child to stare at insects too. He was also fused with drawings and paintings at a young age. For example, he recreated works by Claude Monet, or made realistic fine paintings. ,,I always made sure to learn old techniques by building a painting layer by layer like the old masters. Like her, I made my own paint from an egg yolk,” says the Amsterdam native who developed self-taught.

Heady world
Before he knew it, he was decades away. After studying medicine, he specialized in oncological surgery: cutting out cancer. In recent years, he also did surgical research in a laboratory on making cancer cells light up. ,,That research became a business and I set it up with a fellow researcher and sold it. The research became ‘corporate business,’ we were in the USA and saw the whole pharmaceutical industry coming at us. That’s a fierce world.”

Eventually, De Jong sold the research to an Italian company that is now developing it further. Whether this made him millions? ,,No, we’re talking a few tens of thousands of euros.”

Applying for jobs didn’t go smoothly for De Jong either because of a surplus of surgeons. ”Whenever I applied, there were always about thirty or forty super-qualified people ahead of me.”

Bad news
The surgeon is an iconic profession, but it is also much, hard and arduous work

Samuel de Jong
Over the years, De Jong continued to combine his surgical work with art. During his appointment at the Daniel den Hoedkliniek, for example. An intense time: ,,Hard work and weekly, on Thursdays, those conversations with the patients in which I had to deliver bad news: That despite everything, it stopped for them. And yes, things went well too, but by then you had already done a lot of damage to people to get rid of the cancer.”

Six years ago, De Jong traveled with Doctors Without Borders to operate in Papua New Guinea for four months. An intense time, he looks back. ,,Amid the violence, we operated on people who had been mutilated with machetes. I did it for about four months. That was very intensive because there was work every day of the week and the violence continued unabated.”

Career Switch
While he continues to create his works of art, last year he decided to go into it full time. And he still gets puzzled looks when he talks about his career switch. ”Surgery is an iconic profession, like a firefighter or pilot. But it’s also a lot of hard, hard work. And in this life, you only have one life to live. It wasn’t my calling.”

Now he has his hands free to focus entirely on making art from insects. Not little animals that he dips in gold paint, but precisely recreated insects from tiny molds, at actual size. Incidentally, De Jong does not use real insects. ”Dead insects fall apart quickly, they are fragile and decay quickly.” By imitating them, he has them literally and figuratively in hand and they don’t have to die for it either.

The color blue appears more often in his works. So he traveled to Paris to join the paint mixer where French artist Yves Klein (1928-1962) also had his signature blue made.

Velvet mite
On that background color, he presents his butterflies, moths and dragonflies. ,,By zooming in, we see more and more the beauty of the small. It is important that we continue to see that. Something small can break a lot, just look at the piece of cell code RNA which is corona. But a small animal like a velvet mite, zoom in on it, it’s such a beautiful animal.”

De Jong points to the table he is sitting at. ”Look carefully around you, even if it’s just the grain in the table you’re working on, there’s so much beauty in it. And if you just bang on, yes, you miss out on all that beauty.”

Besides insects, De Jong also makes “free work” with forms that appeal to him. ”I will continue to develop, also in the coming years.”

Whether De Jong will ever return to the hospital? He doesn’t rule it out. His registration has now expired, and to keep it, he must complete “flight hours. However, physician he will remain for the next few years as long as his current physician registration is valid. What happens if the corona crisis threatens an unexpected shortage of physicians? ”If there is a structural shortage, then I will come back to doctor for a while. If necessary.”

View the collection of Samuel Dejong


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