Monday 29 June 2015

Rijnmond - Imagining the future


Rijnmond – Imagining the future

Last month I worked on the Maasvlakte, so I had to drive west along the industries of Botlek and Europoort every morning.  What I particularly noticed was the green look of it after coming in the Europoort section. Trees, grass, bushes everywhere – and industry of course. Somehow I see the nature parts first.
Taking that road every day, I started imagining: it’s already green, what will happen when there is no more oil to process and these industries will be abandoned?
Of course it helps that many chimneys already have a rusted look, and much of the other industry as well. So a bit more rust, a bit more decay and lots of extra green.
I wanted to paint that!
Things like this have been done before, but never my way.
That meant looking well at the oil plants – and still driving safely - remembering how it looks now and picking out the structures that I think interesting.
All that was combined to create an imaginary oil plant somewhere in the area. For my composition I did some thinking. I could have chosen between horizontal and vertical but that seemed a bit too obvious to me. There had to be a curve somewhere and that can be done with a thing called ‘cantilever composition’
The vertical elements are still there and the element of desertion too; that was to be my painting.
The buildings are decayed and rusty of course, so I needed to work with more details than I usually do. I still wanted to add some ‘haziness’ which is almost always present in the Rijnmond area, due to the influence of sea, sand and blowing wind.
I am really satisfied with the result of my imagination combined with my painting efforts. Maybe I will do some more paintings on this theme.


More information about this watercolour (size, colours and paper used) can be found on www.jannekesatelier.co.nr

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