Erik Odijk (2005)
Over the last 15 years, walks in North America, Asia, Scandinavia and Europe have shown me breathtaking landscapes and sites of incredible natural beauty. For me, physical walking and inner motion are metaphors for each other. I want to go on discovering and searching for variety and potential in myself and in my subject. The source of my material is nature and its phenomena.
The inspiration of an exotic yet brutal environment is translated into large format charcoal and chalk drawings. The image emerges in the balance between the act of drawing and the urge to depict reality. The mark‐making searches for solutions and creates a process that seems to be self‐directing. Like nature itself, the drawing is an order that stems from chaos. This process develops a motoric memory. The detail comprises the essence out of which the final image will materialize, highly condensed. Clarity, sharpness and malleability are momentarily the technical starting points for drawing in situ. The studio work has to translate the specific qualities of the monumental work into a more manageable scale in which obsessive aspects ‐ that for me expand boundaries and possess a specific quality ‐ become manifest with increasing clarity.
My quest is inspiration in the form of accessible and impassioned art where truth and the social function of the work are central. The impressions of the rambler are echoed in the experience of the viewer. Spectator and maker meet at an illusory level. My concern is not primarily the romantic sentiment of the landscape as a comforting backdrop, but the experience of chthonic nature as a self‐determining reality that manifests itself independently of and without regard for human beings.