Atelier Cafe Renie Spoelstra

During this Atelier Café I will talk about my recent project or research trip to Vancouver, Canada, titled Ancient Land, Layers of Silence. The work shown has not yet been shown at exhibitions. This talk goes beyond an introduction and is designed for an audience familiar with visual arts. Apart from the new series, I’ll show some other work as well.

Ancient Land, Layers of Silence

My drawings arise from a literal presence in the landscape. Through walking, watching and waiting, I absorb the place, translating it into drawings in my studio. The landscapes - composed of many layers of charcoal and based on my own film footage - evoke a mysterious, cinematic atmosphere in which figuration and abstraction merge. They depict universal, often fragile landscapes and invite slow observation and awareness of our relationship with nature.

After previous series around the glaciers of Iceland, among others, and a pilgrimage to Peru (after the death of my sister), I now want to develop new work in the northwest of the American continent, in the Vancouver area. I previously visited this coast after losing my mother, which marked an artistic turning point at the time. I long for the towering, ancient cedar trees, where the fog from the Pacific Ocean continues to haunt, the mountains and green-blue lakes and the waters of the Pacific itself. Besides hiking ancient trails through forests, along rivers, lakes and coast, belonging to the territory of indigenous communities like the Musqeam, Squamish and Lil'Wat, I also visited the Museum of Anthropology Vancouver, the Museum of Vancouver and tour the First Nations Museum, the Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Centre (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and Lil̓wat7úl) Whistler.

This journey forms the basis for a new series of works bridging inner perception, landscape and indigenous knowledge. My aim is to contribute through my work to a different, more connected perspective on people and nature, beyond the western gaze. Not a linear quest from A to B, but a circle: a new intertwining of landscape, inner perception and cultural resonance. This adds a depth, an extra layer, referring to the underlying factor in a metaphorical and historical sense.