About my workI go outside, on a journey through the landscape and through nature. I set off with a purpose. With a map, with information from the web, or simply on intuition, I wander along the rambling routes, old and new, the rutted cart tracks, the highways and the byways, along digital pathways too. I see these as fascinating lines of connectivity formed by and through history.I visit new and ancient landforms, moorlands, archaeological sites, and burial mounds. I take photos, contemplate, experience, and absorb the landscape, cultivated or not, with its structures and natural phenomena. This stimulates a series of perceptions and moments of awareness concerning landscapes. This is my field of research. I see the path as a line of connectivity, the old and new transport route of energy, matter and spirit, leading to insight, wisdom and freedom. The path which, via my world of experience, I rediscover on paper or canvas - recreating, reinterpreting, and inviting response. Winding like a serpent, it is the line I use to reconcile or conquer a landscape. The path challenges circumstances, then and now. The morass, the hill, the mountain must be overcome. The path that you follow, the river or the (digital) highway or byway that you navigate, cruise or surf, is the propelling energy. This energy clusters at crossroads, at dams, on hills or on mountaintops. And here is the choice: are you detained, deflected, or attracted by the patch of light in my drawing and the vibrant hues on my canvas, or are you assimilated into the spatial infinity of the conceptualised landscape? The faces, the people in my landscapes, are nodes and points of communication. The faces represent new and ancient insights. They look in different directions; they are one with the landscape and with the environment; they possess knowledge of the landscape. These faces belong to the lines of connectivity. My work depicts the unity that is found by linking the past, the present and the future. Wilfried Lansink More about Wilfried Lanink by: Erik Slagter |