Zelfportret , oil on canvas 50 x 60 cm.

While painting I was pondering about the question who I am without my name.

​ I remember being 5 year old and watching the playing children on the school square. How come I have become Gerdi and not her or her or him...I wondered. At home I looked in the mirror and found it bewildering that that strange face belonged to me. 
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​Not using my name is like disconnecting from family patterns and cultural setting. Who am I without all the stories which have shaped my life?

“Water as a creature”, oil on canvas, 70 x 100cm.

Memories; childhood nightmares.

The water is coming; walls of water, wide and hugely high.

And then there is nothing.
All what was dear and loved is gone. 
Why love and create something?
If it all can disappear in seconds?
Who am I?
Why being at all,
if not for the joy of creating and loving?

Water asked me: “Please allow me to love you”
Can you love what has destroyed you?

Will it’s embrace kill me?
Does water has a heart?

“I am Earth”, that was the thought in my mind when I started to paint. 
I love this planet with all its life forms. I love the different soils with their different textures and colours. I eat what these soils give me and then it becomes me. It is transformed into my body. I am Earth. Just like our ancestors who disappeared mostly under the earth. 

So many living beings passed away. 
We walk over them, without realising it.
Sometimes they left hidden treasures. 
Different beings, different treasures, different inheritances.
Human ancestors with their different cultures excavated by archaeologists.
Animals, , plants, trees....
The fossils of little sea animals, left their traces in the stones. 
The  bones of dinosaurs, appear as unexpected treasures out of the permafrost.
Millions of beings transmuted into oil which we use to run our current society and heat our houses. I hope I will be able to adapt to the changes that it brings to this beautiful planet. 
I love this Earth. I hope to live long enough to see more of how the necessary changes will unfold. 

“I am Earth”, oil on canvas 70 x 100 cm. 

Coincidentally I met this Poem from Rutger Kopland. The original is written in Dutch. The poem is called : “Old Faces”. The last part reads like a comment on my painting. When I translate it , it is something like this....

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“Old women....
​
But what returns in their faces is
passed by, old yellow gold light.

over that beautiful world which is still there
​but only because she was there. “

He improvises on the guitar and sings. I let my hands be moved by the music and drift in different worlds. 

There remains a need to share some reflections in writing. Only images of the works I create doesn’t seem to be enough to fully capture everything I would love to express. So I use this space again to write down what comes to my mind.
I will also share again some fragments of my creative work process. This year with Corona lock down I have spend quite some time painting and drawing. There is not yet a clear central theme. It is all a kind of improvisation, jumping into the unknown, following patterns, traces of a kind of energy, fine movements, lines, colour combinations, weaving together guiding me towards a moment that they suddenly connect together into something bigger and then there comes a pause or an end. Some paintings keep evolving over years. I will show some in a next post. 

There have been several months that the words didn’t come easily. The coherence got lost. It was a time of letting go. It still is I think.
Everything wants to become more and more simple.
At first I thought it was a kind of personal mini crisis, but now I think it is not a that personal. Most emotions and thoughts don’t seem to be that personal. sooner or later somebody else feels and or thinks just the same though circumstances can be quite different. 

Besides painting and drawing I did spend quite some time on taking care of plants and gathering them around me tough I do not yet have a garden. Plants, trees and birds are very much inspiring me at the moment. Being with them is a tremendous joy.