Ton Schulten is a Dutch

Dutch people

The Dutch people are an ethnic group native to the Netherlands. They share a common culture and speak the Dutch language. Dutch people and their descendants are found in migrant communities worldwide, notably in Suriname, Chile, Brazil, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and the United...

 painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

 who mainly paints landscapes

Landscape art

Landscape art is a term that covers the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, and especially art where the main subject is a wide view, with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works landscape backgrounds for figures can still...

 using bright blocks of colour.

Schulten was one of six baker's children. He graduated fom the Enschede

Enschede

Enschede , also known as Eanske in the local dialect of Twents, is a municipality and a city in the eastern Netherlands in the province of Overijssel and in the Twente region...

 Academy for Art and Industry in 1962 as a graphic designer

Graphic designer

A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, printed or electronic media, such as brochures and...

 and worked in advertising ? and gardens of colorful flowers. In 1991 he was in a serious car accident on Tenerife

Tenerife

Tenerife is the largest and most populous island of the seven Canary Islands, it is also the most populated island of Spain, with a land area of 2,034.38 km² and 906,854 inhabitants, 43% of the total population of the Canary Islands. About five million tourists visit Tenerife each year, the...

, in which a friend was killed and he and his wife Ank Lammerink were put into a coma

Coma

In medicine, a coma is a state of unconsciousness, lasting more than 6 hours in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light or sound, lacks a normal sleep-wake cycle and does not initiate voluntary actions. A person in a state of coma is described as...

. After the accident his style changed and he began painting landscapes of the Twente

Twente

Twente is a non-administrative region in the eastern Netherlands. It encompasses the most urbanised and easternmost part of the province of Overijssel...

 area using initially primary colours and later also pastel shades. Ootmarsum houses Schulten's own gallery and a Ton Schulten museum, which opened in 1997. His work has great commercial success, but is critically considered to be lightweight. He was knighted a member of the Order of Orange-Nassau

Order of Orange-Nassau

The Order of Orange-Nassau is a military and civil order of the Netherlands which was created on 4 April 1892 by the Queen regent Emma of the Netherlands, acting on behalf of her under-age daughter Queen Wilhelmina. The Order is a chivalry order open to "everyone who have earned special merits for...

 in ???????. In 2004 the German art critic Harmut Rau named his style of painting Concensism. In 2005 Schulten successfully sued an amateur painter for making works in his style.