Mud (more drowned lands of Saeftinghe)

Again a painting from this endlessly inspiring tidal estuary landscape "Saeftinge"near the Belgian border. In this case painted in commission for someone who as a geologist has been fascinated by mud all his working life. He would probably use the term "tidal sediments" or such, but I think the word "mud" adds an essential dimension to this earth-scape that neither scientific understanding of the processes involved, or my interpretation of the satellite images can convey. Mud is beautiful.

The drowned lands of Saeftingen

Saeftingen 1 oils on canvas 70 x 110 cm

On the Westerschelde estuary, just north of the Dutch/ Belgium border lies a stroke of wetland called "the drowned lands of Saeftingen". The tidal currents are large here and have formed spectacular estuarian landscapes. The plants and animals that dwell here are adapted to an environment which can suddely change from fresh water to salty. The saltyness determines which planrts grow where. In summer some of these plants turn deep red. You can see in which season the Google Earth satellilte images have been taken bij the colours of the vegetation.

No More Tigers and The Tiger Returns

oil on linnen 120 X 140 cm

This (not so good) photo of my latest painting is again all about deforestation. During my Google earth explorations of Malaysia I was triggered by a World Wildlife Fund location where research was carried out to see if tigers come back to a sustainably logged piece of forest. The conclusion seems to be that they do. Tigers form the top of the ecological pyramid in these parts, if they don't return you can be shure that the logging is'nt all that sustainable after all. This was good news and I wanted to paint it. However, sustainable logging doesnt look all that spectacular from above. I needed to offset it against the non sustainable kind of logging. There's plenty of that to be found in Malaysia. It looks like the painting below. Large pieces of land are stripped of valuable timber, burnt and bulldozered it in pretty paterns (probable following contours in the land). All ready to plant oil palm trees to supplement our hunger for fuel.

oil on linnen 120 X 140 cm

Lonely at the top

oil on canvas 100 * 120 cm

This must be one of the most remote places on earth, somewhere deep in the Russian Tundra (again). It's not a a spectacular mountain. Like most of the thousands of similar hills in the neigbourhood it's capped with cold granite rocks. I wouldn't be surprised if no human being has ever bothered to climb this particular hill, in fact I doubt if anyone has ever even taken note of it. But it's an amazing piece of earth history, thrust up as a mountain range I don't know how long ago, worn down by wind, rain, ice and snow. Lots of snow by the looks of it: this place was under the ice cap probably not so long ago (maybe 10.000 years). Anyway, I discovered this hill using Google Earth, and untill some-one challanges my claim, I claim it as MINE! Well at least in a virtual sense. The Earth of course doens't belong to any one except maybe life in general. So, I claim it in the name of LIFE IN GENERAL (and me in particular). 

Spider impact crator

oil on canvas 100 X 120 cm

Flying over the North Western Australian dessert you might come across this huge meteorite impact crator.It's about 13 km across. There's hundreds of these meteor crators all over the panet. This is certainly not the biggest, I just liked the shape. Of course in all of (human) history there's never been an impact this size. It makes me wonder what would happen if a chunk of space rock this size would hit us.... A nice subject to discuss on my GE philosophy site (havent got round to it yet).

WAD Next?

oil on canvas 100 x 100 cm

And yet another one in the series about this bit of wilderness close to home. In this case it's another close up of the island of Schiermonikoog. I can't claim any deep philosophical insight behind this painting (so much for my new blog- see previous post). I was drawn to the composition, the almost alien form. An open invitation to make my own interpretation. I havent found out yet what those round objects are. I suspect they are thorny bushes which have grown out in a circle over the years, gathering sand into small circular dunes. But that's just a guess.

WAD?

oil in canvas 100 X 100 cm

The "Wadden" islands along the Dutch/ German/ Danish coast lie in front of a shallow sea called the Wadden Sea. Large parts fall dry at low tide. "Wad" is a Dutch word for these wetlands. Water gets trapped behind sandbanks at high tide and flows back in riverlike channels as the tide recedes. This creates a wonderfull, ever changing landscape of fine and course sands, clays and all sorts of life. The waddensea is the nursery for fish in the North sea.  No-one realy knows what'll happen to this shallow sea when sea levels will rise in the coming century. Wad?

Changing Tundra

oil on canvas 60 X 60 cm

Google Earth gives you visual access to the most remote and inaccessable places on earth. Places where nature has just run its course without ever being influenced by us. Here, somewhere in the Russian Tundra you can see how the river has changed course countless times, leaving all sorts of slowly dissapearing scars in the landscape. Really wild and another great startingpoint for a painter to just let his brush do the painting. The result may apear like a COBRA abstract, but isn't all that far removed from reality. Just this once: here's the Google Earth original image (colours slightly enhanced):

Down to the sea

oil on canvas 100*100 cm

I finished this one a while ago, just didn't seem to get round to making a decent photo. Again a Greenland ice river flowing down tot the sea. Ever faster as well. As a result Greenland is finaly beginning to live up to its name! What I love about these Greenland mountains is that you can really see the way the ice has shaped them. The power of ice is incredible, and that's what I aimed to get across in this painting.

The Third Slenk on Schiermonikoog

oil on canvas 70*100 cm

"Slenk"is a Dutch word for which I don't know a good translation. A slenk is like a stream in a salty wetland, where tidal water flows in and out. These slenks are located on an island called Schiermonikoog along the Dutch coast. Its probably the most wild and natural part of my otherwise manmade country. I spent some weeks on my knees in the mud there when I was about 21 and training to become a biologist. I was'nt very good at it, I had a hard time distinguishing species of plants, I did'nt like the long hours of hard work in the rain. I guess that's where I decided I was'nt going to become a real biologist after all. From this moment on I was more interested in saving the planet with windmills and recycling and such. Now I look down on the spot with Google Earth and remember the beauty and wildness. I will have to go back there sometime in the near future.
By the way, the scale of my GE paintings can be quite different. "Eye-level" here is 1.25 km. In the Angry Tundra painting the eye level is about 10 km. You can jump across these slenks in most places!

Dark clouds over the Maldives

oil on canvas 100 * 100 cm


Maldives, island paradise! The Maldives are well known for their coral reefs and luxery tourism. But for how long? On average the island rises only 1 meter above sea level. Already they're having serious problems with storms flooding parts of the islands. On the other hand, coral grows, thats why these islands have kept up with rising sea levels in the past. The question is: will the coral be able to keep up with the rapid rise of the sea level this century? Scientists still don't know enough about coral growth to be certain.

Amazon-X2

oil on canvas 100*100 cm

This is another part of the Amazon forest that has been clear cut and/ or burnt, depleted and eroded and left for cattle to graze the sparse vegetation that remains. To ensure there's enough for cattle to drink you can clearly see dams. To me they look like lonely eyes staring into the blue skies, hoping for rain.

Us

oil on canvas 100 * 100 cm

What more can I say? There's already over 5 billion of us. I thought I'd pick the largest city on earth to look for an image, so I Googled to check out the competition. That's how I started on painting Shanghai sometime in January. Later I was corrected by National Geographic: acoording to NG Tokio is number 1 and will remain to be for some time. Anyway Shanghai will do me fine. It took a while this painting. I wanted the city to look immense, endless and complex. A threat to all other life, yet with a throbbing life of its own. It reflects my mixed feelings towards our own species. So intelligent and creative and yet so arrogant and shortsighted. The painting was quite a struggle. I wonder who won?

Amazon-X

oil on canvas 100* 100 cm

So, this is what becomes of the Amazon forest (in Brazil) after its been clear cut to make place for soy production. The soy bean of course is the main ingredient for US and European cattle feed these days. That's why these fields have the colour of a nice big juicy steak. Or could it be just the iron in the soil? The great thing about being an artist is that you don't have to worry about silly little things like cause and effect. I just choose any colour I damm well please!
I realised I haven't given much technical information about my GE paintings. The series I'm making (this is number 4, 5 will follow in a couple of days) consists of oil paintings on canvas 100 cm * 100 cm (about 40 * 40 inch). Why don't you let me (and others) know what you think about the painting? There's a 'comment' option below this post.

Deep in the Sahara forest

oil on canvas 100 * 100 cm

It took a while, but here's my Sahara forest. Forest? Yes it was a forest only 6000 years ago. That's about as long as recorded history of mankind, but in geological terms not even yesterday, but a minute ago! Just to show how climate change can have huge impacts, whether it's our doing or not.

Melting ice-capped mountaintops for you

"Melting ice-capped mountaintops for you" oil on canvas 100 * 100 cm

The title comes from an old Lou Reed song on his famous 1973 "Transformer" album. It's the earliest reference I rember to climate change and descibes the image well. It's somewhere along the coast of Greenland where the "rivers of ice" flow directly into the sea in the form of huge icebergs. If we had Google Earth ten years ago you would have seen that the big ice river shown here would have been much longer.

First posting

Angry Tundra oil on canvas 100*100 cm

I have to start somewhere, so why not in Siberia?
I was inspired by the incredible 5 part BBC television documentary "Power of the Planet" to go look for the effects of global warming on the Tundra areas in Siberia -using Google Earth - how else would I get there? In the series a scientist shows how the melting tundra causes enormous amounts of methane to build up under the numerous lakes in the area. She hacks a hole in the frozen water and lights up the outflowing methane. The result was a flare several meters high! Anyway, this melting tundra is an extra worry for climate scientists because methane has a far greater warming effect than CO2. So I went looking for a strong image to convey the feeling. It resulted in a painting which further develops my emotional response to what's happening there. Hence the title:
Angry Tundra.