Since his studies at De Ateliers, Laurens Stok has done many studies as a painter into the motif in his work, and the way in which it is painted. With motifs such as net curtains, frames and reflections, he makes paintings in which transparency, nonchalance and directness play a role. “I like to show the viewer how the layers are built, with the flexibility of a few brush strokes.” His R&D application concerns a new series where he paints on bubble wrap and prints it on canvas. He does this color layer by color layer, in a way with which he arrives at a very broad color spectrum. The grid also offers many visual possibilities. Stok applied for the R&D scheme to be able to purchase the rather expensive prepared linen so that he could develop this technique on a large format.

Stok exhibited at Fons Welters and Nest and he was nominated for De Scheffer in Dordrecht and for the Royal Prize for Painting. For his paintings he initially took inspiration from banality and kitsch, later this broadened to the richness of the everyday, simplicity, even boredom, which he translates aesthetically through a repetitive character. Bubble wrap, with its functionality that you don't suspect a design idea behind, fits in there. The R&D committee considers it a strong professional practice for an artist who produces powerful work with little guidance.

With this support Stok ordered sixty meters of large linen and sixty meters for smaller formats, material that gave the room to work with speed. He stretched bubble wrap on the floor and worked with beamers in which monumentality knows no bounds. In the process he started to add more abstraction to figurative compositions. He decided to give paint a more autonomous role and to move the photographic reference images more to the background. He exhibited the new work at Daily Practice in Rotterdam, with invitations to a network of exhibition makers, museums and colleagues.