Niek Hendrix's paintings are primarily about looking. The visual ideas you find in them come from an enormous archive, where he has stored all kinds of visual material. He prefers to use icons from painting, which he then combines with other, more contemporary images. Think of the famous still lifes by Pieters Claesz from the Rijksmuseum collection, which he has frequently used for his paintings. He also used such a still life earlier for a series that goes from light to dark. In addition to these figurative images, Hendrix often places paintings based on a more contemporary visual language, such as logos or existing photographs, pages from art books, or a simple signpost along the railway track. Hendrix is the Actor, the image is passive; after all, he does what he wants with it. He renders figurative representations in shades of grey, while he almost always uses colour for his abstract works. Niek Hendrix was educated at the AKV| St. Joost Academy in Breda and the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. In 2012, he participated in the group exhibition Point de Vue at the Stedelijk Museum Den Bosch. In recent years, he has been nominated for various art prizes and placed on the Longlist for the Prix de Rome. In 2017, Niek Hendrix won the prestigious Royal Prize for Painting. In 2022, he was awarded De Scheffer 2022, a national art prize from the Dordrechts Museum. From 2020 to 2022, he stayed at the Mondriaan studio in Blaricum during the coronavirus pandemic. In 2023, Niek Hendrix participated in the television programme De nieuwe Vermeer (The New Vermeer). His work has now been included in various (corporate) collections at home and abroad.