A Life Shaped by Precision and Paint Before he was a painter, Johan Plas was a man of gears and springs. Born in Alkmaar, Netherlands, his early years were defined by the meticulous, quiet discipline of a clockmaker. This background in precision would later find its way into his visual language, though his true calling lay in the fluid strokes of a brush rather than the rigid movement of a timepiece. He spent much of his active life b…