From 24 February 2011 through 26 March 2011, I am exhibiting some of my work at the Art Gallery De Cleene Houttuyn, Langeviele 45 in 4331 LR MIDDELBURG.

Images of the void occupied : the Western Scheldt region as seen through my eyes and through the eyes of Zeeland artists.

Are you perhaps contemplating a trip to a splendid ancient city within the 7 provinces, a trip full of surprises? No need to confine oneself to only Bruges. Of course, it too has been preserved in its pristine state, but there are others as well. Would it appeal to you to get a taste of a town in Zeeland, a town imbued with its very own personality and character, crisscrossed by canals bordered by ancient facades that speak of ages past, a unique Gothic Town Hall and picturesque squares dating back to the 14th century, and little houses along narrow winding laneways, all evocative of the past with their own distinctive atmosphere: a Zeeland ambiance.

Inside the small boutiques along the market place, one can still detect the lingering remnants of the colonial past. All of this, so different from the usual, is accessible within the hour.

Can it entice you to come and take a look?

A void occupied

With these images I have attempted to mould the immense spaces along the Western Scheldt into a presence with its own distinct personality and to depict the landscapes such as they exist across the border into the Netherlands: the Flemish Zeeland region.

I visited them since painters are fated to seek out solitudes and I was constantly preoccupied with the question how to best render that feeling of solitude and isolation (perhaps loneliness?) through my work. As such, these landscapes are metaphors representative of my thoughts and inner personal reflections.

You will recall them as you wander along the dyke in Walsoorden, or along the way to the drowned lands of Safthinge.

When you sit gazing into the distance, vacantly, contemplatively, lost within the environment, you come to realize how the landscape assumes the shape of a living presence, how its colours unfold in delicate and refined nuances, how the sun lights the surface of the waters in rose and golden hues, and fleeting emerald brightnesses reflect their sparkles in the bursting ripples.

The sounds, the shrill cries of water fowl, the rhythm of their wondrously fast feet traipsing across the sands at the water’s edge, the measured orchestrated precision flights of a flock of silvery birds, now dark, now silver against the background palette of the skies or, like one great massive marine body, flowing across the beach, all of it an unending source of delight to soothe the mind.

A few young boys skirt the water’s edge with fishing rods, learning about nature at an early, receptive age.

Near Terhole in the midst of the low-lying flat polders: the unbroken rhythm of the march of trees occupying the spaces and travelling row upon row down to the far horizon, or the expanse of the grasslands and the cornfields like waving seas across the silence of these peaceful lands.

You too will discover that these empty spaces really are not empty at all, if only you take the time to train your mind and allow yourself to become enthralled by this artfully deceptive sound of silence and solitude: the silence and the solitude of what seems void yet is perpetually occupied.

The Artist!

Gabriella Cleuren