Landscape, Diptych- in detail
Landscape, Diptych, mixed media on panel, 2 x 60 x 120 x 15 cm, 2020, Begijnenvest studio
The resulting image nods obliquely at the Chinese and Japanese ink landscape traditions—monochrome, vertically inclined—but this was not the driving intention.
shifting scale after a season of stillness
After a year immersed in small black-and-white works, I felt compelled to create something larger: a statement piece, both a capstone and a resolution. At the time, large-scale work felt intimidating. The 2020 Lockdowns had pushed life inward, toward the domestic, and an intimate scale seemed appropriate and natural. Still, I missed the challenge of working on a large format. Landscape was painted flat, as always with me, and took up the best part of the work table.
I began the piece with the fragile line where the sanded plaster meets the future glossy surface —a horizon that will be both emphasised and undone as the image evolves.
The vertical seam between the two panels became an essential formal element, both part of and apart from the image. Initially, I had envisioned a minimalist outcome, recalling triptychs from six years prior, but the painting resisted my initial intentions. . The surface turned dense, layered, complex—difficult to resolve.
discovering form and movement
Despite this, a gentle rhythm emerged. Drooping forms and pulled passages gave the composition a softened downward momentum. The abstracted landscape rolls in three waves toward a bottom that seems to vanish—cut off, rather than contained. From the distant horizon, a free fall begins, subtle yet dynamic.
Layers of gloss, drying unevenly, formed an unstable surface like cooling magma—flowing downward to a trapped into a bulbous mass beneath the glossy skin. This gravitational pull lends the work an elemental quality, removing any purity. The image is both literal and illusory, collapsing droopily in a vertical motion toward the floor. The horizon above hints at distance, the bottom simply disappears.
final flourishes and playful notes
The final touches include scattered blobs of glass wax—independent, decorative, irrational. Like cherries on a vanilla sundae if you will.