2009 Investigating Light. Trees, 2

Neurologist Frans Cornelissen showed me a documentary about people with dyslexia, visualising the way they often see one letter clearly and the area around the word vaguely. It made me understand why I make my drawings as a combination of details and smudges.

At that time I lived in Schoorl, a dune area near the sea, overgrown with beautiful, whimsically shaped conifers. In 2009 I was walking through the forest with my kids in a pram and I noticed all the specks of light on the forest floor – right there I rolled out some paper and started drawing what the sun and the trees were creating.

Earlier in my life I stayed at boarding school in the woods near Baarn; from that period too I have vivid memories of lights and shadows. More recently I found this in the Steigerwald in Bavaria, the forests of herman de vries, when I stayed and worked with him.

More and more I understand why I follow the changing and jumping light. As though I want to read my interpretation of reality in the continuous change of light and dark. Drawing it, I can get hold of it. It is communicating with myself and I want to share my way of looking with others.

In 2009 I unrolled 40 meter of paper in the Nollen Forest near Schoorl. At that time and in that area a pyromaniac started forest fires in places which I knew well and loved very much. I marked one square meter each time to draw, that is the area I can cover when I am drawing. Then the next square meter, etcetera.

After that I unrol the paper in my studio to finish it. The contours I sketched are filled in and I work on the drawing in such a way that my perception is embodied. In the process of drawing I completely disappear into the work I am doing. It is like a performance.

The whole length of 40 meter shows the shifts in time and space and highlights drawing as a process. Door tijdsmomenten over elkaar heen te tekenen kan ik een plek bewaren – zo ontstond mijn project Preserved Places.