December 18th, 2023
transparency
In recent weeks, in the run-up to the longest night, I regularly posted on Facebook and Instagram about my work on the theme of light and darkness. With this piece in alabaster I wrote:
‘Light shows us what is beneath the surface … Light opens and brings (to) life. It creates movement, a flowing unity between what we see on the outside and what is present on the inside. Shape and stone, outer and inner.’
From the series of swan figures that I made between 2004 and 2008, this sculpture with the name gedaante (figure) is the only one that has not yet ‘spread its wings’. It is currently in my own home and every day I experience how the light touches the shape and material and brings it to life. Alabaster is the only type of stone that changes under the influence of the elements such as light, heat and cold. This makes it a stone that deeply radiates a delicate vulnerability.
Gedaante is about the inside. About the flowing and less clearly defined part of us. About the misty and the veiled. About who we are without a thick skin or hard shell or wall that separates our inside from the outside. About what becomes visible when we dare to be vulnerable and transparent. About how letting the light in leads to transformation.
Wij hebben dit beeld thuis staan, voor het raam. Iedere dag anders. Het doet me vaak denken aan het Ierse liedje Molly Bawn..