Herr Seele

Belgian cartoonist, painter, writer, actor, media figure, piano tuner and piano collector. Peter van Heirseele was born in a artistic family. His father Henk was a servant, his mother Odette Pannecoucke (1931- 20 March 2008) a painter, as became his brother Hans (25 February 1957). Mieke (1963) was his youngest sister. Peter followed the Catholic Sint-Jozefsinstituut in his birthplace Torhout. At age 16 he went to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent. Next he went to Wales to become a piano-tuner at the two-year Ystrad Mynach School. In Florence he stayed a year to learn to restore instruments. Finding and restoring neglected historical piano's became his passion. He now has a noted collection of two hundred piano's in Ostende. In Ghent he met the artist Luc Charles Zeebroek (Kamagurka) in the late seventies. Together they set up the absurd strip Cowboy Henk (24 Sept 1981 - End 2011). It was first published in the newspaper De Morgen (1981-2), later in Humo (1982-2011). Kamagurka wrote the script, Peter illustrated it. Cowboy Henk was a kind of anti-hero: an unpredictable, characterless subject in a surrealistic world. Spring 2013, Humo published the strip again and the strip was also published in many countries from Scandinavia to the US. Together with Kamagurka he made absurdistic television: Sfeervol Bullshitten (1982), Kamagurka en Herr Seele (1985-1986), Lava (TV1 en VPRO 1989-1991), Bob en George (BRTN TV2 VPRO) (1998) Link to Wikipedia