Kunstschouw Zeeland
After Kunstschouw, I noticed how differently I looked at some of the works after seeing them outside my studio and talking about them with visitors.
Showing work always changes something. Paintings that felt connected in the studio looked different to me once I saw them together in the exhibition. Some worked well beside each other. Others needed more space.
During Kunstschouw
I was at Schuur De Wilde every day, together with several other artists. Some moments were busy, others were quiet. In between we sat outside in the sun. We deliberately did not stand beside visitors all day, watching over their shoulders. The barn had space, and I wanted people to be able to walk around freely and have their own experience with the work.
I don’t really like “selling” my work. I tried it once when someone was very interested in Icelandic Evening, a large framed mixed media work. And I immediately got it wrong. He backed off. That was a bit of a blow, because of course I would have loved to see the work find a good home. But most conversations happened naturally.
One woman stopped at one of the Icelandic Houses and began telling me about the journeys she used to make through Iceland with her husband. She recognised something in the little house: strong and sturdy in the landscape, but still very small. She really wanted to take the work home, but told me she would have to save for it first.
What people responded to differed enormously. Some connected immediately with a particular work. Sometimes that also opened up a personal story. There were gallery owners, collectors and other art lovers, groups arriving by bicycle, families and small groups of friends. Several landscapes from the Icelandic Houses series found new homes during Kunstschouw.
PRESENTING COMPACT SERIES
During Kunstschouw I became increasingly aware of how much the presentation of work influences the experience itself.
Schuur De Wilde was a spacious place, which gave visitors room to move around the work. It was also quite dark, and not every artwork came across as well as it could have. The location was slightly off the main route, but I actually liked that. Some visitors had specifically selected my work from the Kunstschouw catalogue and came to the location to see it.
Showing everything at once does not automatically create more clarity. Sometimes the opposite happens. I noticed that a smaller, more focused selection made it easier to see which works belonged together.
LEARNING TO HELP PEOPLE LOOK
One thing Kunstschouw made me reflect on is how presentation also shapes the way people enter the work.
I know the stories behind the works and see connections between them that a visitor cannot possibly know. Kunstschouw made me more aware of that. A viewer enters the work differently. More quietly perhaps, or through one image at a time.
That realization does not make me want to simplify the work itself. But it does make me think more carefully about what I show together, and how much I show at once.
ZEELAND AS A SECOND PLACE
After Kunstschouw we stayed in Zeeland a little longer. The openness, the water, moving through the landscape by boat and the slower rhythm there stayed with me.
Alongside my studio in Voorhout, Zeeland has gradually started to feel like a second place for me and my work. Kunstschouw itself only returns every few years, but I hope to continue participating whenever the moment aligns again.