Each time I see another set of these lino prints, reduced or essentially simple landscape as I did sometimes see them, they tell me a different story .
Last week I saw some very pretty multi layer woodcut prints, so intricate and pretty smart in reflecting the subtle moods of a landscape. Beautiful. And I so love layers, both in art itself or in experiencing at. And yet... I'm continuing to work on this series of lino print landscapes in a single shape and in mono color. It started in last year's spring. Then I had this vision of a dark cloud that reflects its color in a couple of small canals. And pretty soon after I saw the image of 3 big farm building on a row on the edge of a 17th(?) century drainage project, called 'polder'. We had just made a family visit in the north of our country, Friesland and were riding past this image, just like that!
Other pictures came all through the next year. Somehow you cannot just think up a simple image, you have to see them, somewhere, sometime. If not, you start constructing, and that is exactly not what you want when depicting something natural. After the first seeing of an idea, it is the struggle to have just the right balance in lines and shapes.
The linocuts are made out of very slik linoleum. It brings it's own type of interaction with ink. That livelyhood and a bit of the impredictable is what I love in these single shape and mono color prints. It brings nuance back again.
This is the newest kid on the block. It is about a row of trees, like the big landes you see up north above Groningen. In the north of Groningen there are thoses ways that are bike and single traffic ways nowardays. The bring you to small villages, big farms and very old little churches. It is the area of het Hoge Land, you may have visited that area.... I image those ways used to be big and important. And somehow, those rows of trees are different from the rows of trees along the dykes of Zeeuws-Vlaanderen. I have not yet been able to make a good portrait of the Zeeuws-Vlaamsche trees, but I just did a portrait of our threes up north.
One of our irregular visits there this summer and I saw this image. As always next came the evaluation and trial and error process of balancing the size, shape and lines. See below for a couple of versions, and even some paintings just started.
15 prints are sent out in the #oneofmanypostcard project. Maybe you got one!! And a couple of prints are part of the book of poems made with Marianne van Velzen: "in jouw irissen geen baggerslootjes". Maybe the row of trees-print is about the last one of this series. But considering the arrival of winter making the landscape more shapely.. maybe there will be another one yet again....
