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Siemen Dijkstra

Inspired landscapes by the undisputed master of the colour woodcut.

Internationally known and renowned for his unrivaled technique of colour woodcuts and his atmospheric detailed rendition of the Northern landscape.

CRUSADE THROUGH DRENTHE

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Siemen Dijkstra (1968) has been capturing the Drenthe landscape in woodcuts and drawings for almost thirty years. His love for this province started in his youth when he came to live in Pesse around 1970. Siemen Dijkstra: In many “picture books” about Drenthe you see beautiful landscape pictures of heather and sheep, beautiful close-ups of flowers and insects - I was also guilty of this. But those picture books give a distorted and false picture of reality. There is a wide arc around the agricultural areas, as if that landscape, which makes up more than fifty percent of Drenthe, does not exist.

In Crusade through Drenthe, Siemen Dijkstra takes stock of the current situation with the Drenthe landscape. In four routes he criss-crosses his beloved province by bicycle and reports in diary entries, woodcuts and watercolors. Natural and cultural-historical Drenthe specialist Jan van Ginkel provides a broader perspective and more background information in his text contributions. Both Dijkstra and Van Ginkel come to the same urgent warning: use our natural resources better and do not let the centuries-old landscape of Drenthe fall prey to the ruthless efficiency and profit-seeking of intensive agriculture.

Siemen Dijkstra (1968) is the authority in the field of color woodcuts. He makes use of the reduction method in which the image is cut out into a wooden plate, and for each printing run more wood is cut from the same plate. Appropriate to his perfectionism, he uses eight up to fifteen printings, each with a different color, which enables him to achieve his unequaled depth effect.

Like no other he is capable to capture a subtle atmosphere full of color nuances and with a wealth of details. He translates his love for nature into intimate panoramas of trees, leaves and rippling water. Siemen Dijkstra is a creator of atmospheres that often reflect matters of inspiration and nostalgia. His landscapes also show more than the visible reality.

He himself says: 'At the end of the 80s I made my first landscapes in drawing ink. It was a hesitant start. Until then the fantasy and the story had been the main guide for my drawings. The interest in the scenery was indeed already present in my work, but it had not yet found its independent form. However, I felt a strong connection to the northern Dutch rural landscape, whenever I cycled through them at ungodly hours. It brought me back to the countryside where I grew up as a child. After the ink studies in the early 90s the first color woodcuts followed with the landscape as a subject. These landscapes still had a strong symbolic character and were based on Northern spheres, but it marked the beginning of this oeuvre. It was also the Scandinavian painters from the Fin de Siècle, which inspired me. In an era of meaningless Impressionists in these countries they were looking for the soul of the landscape: the genius loki. Capturing space on a flat surface is one thing, capturing the indefinable is another story. In all the years that I am engaged with the landscape I realize that I am actually archiving. Archiving animated landscapes before they are gone.

Siemen Dijkstra studied at the Academy Minerva Groningen, The Netherlands.

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