2013 's-HERTOGENBOSCH Netherlands : Group exhibition with 'Filled emptiness' paintings.
More information about the series "Filled Emptiness unique worlds" >>
A void occupied
With these images I have attempted to mould the immense spaces along the Western Scheldt into a presence with its own distinct personality and to depict the landscapes such as they exist across the border into the Netherlands: the Flemish Zeeland region.
I visited them since painters are fated to seek out solitudes and I was constantly preoccupied with the question how to best render that feeling of solitude and isolation (perhaps loneliness?) through my work. As such, these landscapes are metaphors representative of my thoughts and inner personal reflections.
You will recall them as you wander along the dyke in Walsoorden, or along the way to the drowned lands of Safthinge.
When you sit gazing into the distance, vacantly, contemplatively, lost within the environment, you come to realize how the landscape assumes the shape of a living presence, how its colours unfold in delicate and refined nuances, how the sun lights the surface of the waters in rose and golden hues, and fleeting emerald brightnesses reflect their sparkles in the bursting ripples.
The sounds, the shrill cries of water fowl, the rhythm of their wondrously fast feet traipsing across the sands at the water’s edge, the measured orchestrated precision flights of a flock of silvery birds, now dark, now silver against the background palette of the skies or, like one great massive marine body, flowing across the beach, all of it an unending source of delight to soothe the mind.
