The mills at Kinderdijk on a cloudy winter day. These impressive artefacts show themselves as well as their reflections in this grey and misty landscape. This is an UNESCO World Heritage site at the Alblasserwaard, one of the oldest polders in The Netherlands.
Scotland is the place where green colours can be collected. I did. I elaborated from my 2005 notebook. An art impression of this overwhelming land of landscapes, where earth, sky, clouds and sunlight meet.
I catched the late evening light from the seaside of this dune at Cadzand-Bad.
Kruf, J. (2022) Dune Light [fine art print]. Breda: Private collection.
There is this feeling a storm is coming and all elements – water, earth, fire and air – will be tested. A personal art expression reading today’s headlines about war, climate change, diversity loss, right wing regimes, loss of democracy and human rights, the lust for and use of power, poverty, pollution and above all incompetent leadership. We seem to be frozen, and paralysed to act swiftly and accurately. What to say, what to feel? Words, I can not find. Paint helps.
Dit groepje bomen is over van wat eens een groot en vooral wijs bos was. Een verlaten groepje dat mijn aandacht trok. Zij zijn de laatst overgeblevenen, restanten en als zodanig onderdeel van een (zwaar uitgedund) bosberaad.
De bomen spraken over hoe zij nu toch definitief het pad wilden terugvinden naar waar zij thuishoorden, het bos, hun bos. Een verwoede poging, zo meende ik te ontwaren. Protest ook.
Ik liep even naast Frodo en Sam in het Oude Bos en droomde over de trots en gewortelde wijsheid van de bomen:
“As they listened, they began to understand the lives of the Forest, apart from themselves, indeed to feel themselves as the strangers where all other things were at home. […] Tom’s words laid bare the hearts of trees and their thoughts, which were dark and strange, and filled with a hatred of things that go free upon the earth, gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning: destroyers and usurpers. It was not called the Old Forest without reason, for it was indeed ancient, a survivor of vast forgotten woods; and in there lived yet, ageing no quicker than the hills, the fathers of the fathers of trees, remembering times when they were lords. The countless years had filled them with pride and rooted wisdom, and with malice.”
– Tolkien (1954)
Ik breng een stille ode aan dit bosberaad.
Kruf Huyssons 