Saturday 31 October 2020

Florette Dijkstra / Henri Beyle

 


Stendhal

Pages from Het leven van Henry Brulard (The Life of Henry Brulard)

1980

Amsterdam, De Bezige Bij

translation: C.N. Lijsen

 

 

The French writer Henri Beyle (1783-1842) became known as Stendhal, but used even more pseudonyms during his lifetime, such as Henry Brulard. His book 'The Life of Henry Brulard' (written in 1835-1836, but published much later, in 1890) is a pseudo-autobiography in which Beyle describes his life in great detail. He substantiates his text with maps and all kinds of notes to make the story even more credible. Beyle wrote bare and dry, without using fancy words, because they would only distract from reality. The sole purpose of his writing was to gain self-awareness and understand the meaning of his life. Beyle's realistic writing was not really understood by his contemporaries, except by a few other writers, such as Balzac. 

Beyle's goal-oriented, almost businesslike approach, which was necessary to dissect his own life and understand his actions, moves me. If you engage in such a search, you can actually always continue, because everything you discover offers room for further research. I can imagine that Beyle found more and more data while writing and drawing, making the search endless. Fortunately, he regularly collected his discoveries in the form of books – novels or whatever you should call them. Regrettably they were hardly read. 

My projects often also arise from quests: usually for the work and life of forgotten people. Making drawings helps me to visualize a piece of history or a story and thus to say something about it. In some projects I look back at my own work and try to discover the logic of what I did: does my graduation work has anything to do with what I am doing now? Can I bring back together the paintings I have made and sold by drawing them all? Perhaps it is a desire to keep seeing the drifting, fragmenting life as a natural whole. But perhaps by drawing about it, I always put a layer over reality and get a little further away from it. 

Florette Dijkstra, 2020




Florette Dijkstra

Eindexamenwerk hernomen als tekeningen (Graduation work resumed as drawings)

2018 

pencil on paper

30 x 20 cm (11x)






Florette Dijkstra (NL)

Schilderijen hernomen als tekeningen (Paintings resumed as drawings)

2019-2020 (selection)

pencil on paper

www.florettedijkstra.nl

rk



Saturday 17 October 2020

Femke Dekkers / Paul Cézanne

 


Paul Cézanne

The House of the Hanged Man 

1873

oil on canvas

55 x 66 cm

Musée d'Orsay

 

 

 

One of the things that attract me to the work of Paul Cézanne is the flattening of the pictorial space. 'The House of the Hanged Man' is hard to 'enter' as a viewer, as you bump straight away into walls of paint. "Cézanne organized the picture like stage wings in depth, the horizon high and he indicated the distance through the gradual lightening of the blue. He levels, however, the effect of depth with the sun-lit parts and so largely neutralizes the distance of the various grounds".  

 

Femke Dekkers, 2020




Femke Dekkers (NL)

studio situation (work in progress)

2020 

studio Haagweg Breda (NL)

www.femkedekkers.nl

rk