The work in this exhibition evolved from walks in the dreaming, living, watery land around Amsterdam. The land defines the imagination: it not only generates forms (windmills, cormorants, willows), but also pieces of stories and connections to other places. Part of the land consists of my body, my memories and my brushes, that are trying to turn the paper or linen into a place of mutual imagination. This started with frogs on lily pads, with all the dreamy possibilities of water reflections and Monet's lilies in my mind. But that motif also has symbolic possibilities: frogs croaking in their ditch as a metaphor for landscape painters, or for Dutchmen in general. Soon after, I took unstretched canvas to a wild patch of land in Amsterdam Noord. The aim was to record observations and thoughts more quickly. At the same time, all kinds of drawings and paintings then emerged in my studio: little short walks through memory, on a sheet of paper. Perhaps we can forget about the idea of "landscape" and move among all these dreaming things: crickets, paint, thoughts, rays of light, earth, water reflections, rotten leaves, people, ditch water, mornings, power pylons and bacteria. In order to practice becoming receptive to the ambiguity, gentleness and forgiveness of the land.
I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours.
For a radical democracy.
Derk Thijs