Nota about the Basse du Geer series:
Since I moved to Maastricht at the beginning of this century, I regularly cycle along the Jeker to Tongeren. I have always felt that I was being absorbed into the landscape and that I was going back in time. I don’t feel this so much in the short and beautiful Dutch part of the Jeker, but especially when you cross the bridge at Kanne and end up in Wallonia, where the name changes to the Geer. There, time seems to have stood still. Although, if you look more closely, everything is mixed up.
Beautiful landscapes, a large oil tank next to a house, a beautiful old Romanesque church, a hodgepodge of houses in a street, a field of poplars, a huge dilapidated barn, a flashy modern villa, a neglected square farm, the successive villages and, of course, the Geer. Around every bend in the road, there is something different to see. The combination of beauty and ugliness is what makes this valley so appealing to me.
When I leave the Walloon part on my travels and the Geer becomes the Jeker again, much of the magic is lost. The landscape becomes more expansive and before you know it, you are in Tongeren.
In recent years, I have taken photographs of the Geer valley. The exhibition shows the first results of what I have done with them.
My work is characterised by an abstracted form of reality. This time, I have chosen paper and pastel chalk. With these, I try to convey what this valley means to me in a subtle and perhaps tender way. Variation in colour and repetition of the subject play an important role in this.
These are the first steps towards what may be a long-term project.