Introduction from the book ”Gertrud D, Life and Work”
Drs. Annabelle Birnie, Head of ING Art Management
Amsterdam, July 2006
I first met Gertrud D almost eleven years ago at Gallery Delaive in Amsterdam, where I was working at the time. She burst into the gallery like a passionate whirlwind and made no secret of her admiration for the work of the American abstract expressionist Sam Francis. It was great to talk with her about his work and even more so that she also bought it. Sharing a passion establishes a connection between people and art and is important for Gertrud D as well as for me. Later, when I decided to open my own gallery on the Keizersgracht after a short career at an auction house, I met Gertrud D again. She asked me to assist her with the preparations of her exhibition at the Van der Togt Museum and to lend a helping hand on other projects in the field of culture and art. It soon became clear that Gertrud D lived her whole life in a passionate way and that we, as three starting entrepreneurs in the same boat, could offer her our support. I have always admired her for her frankness and for the practical support she gave us. We had long discussions about art and about her own work, which we carried from one side to the other of her hot top floor of her house as if they were empty sheets of paper. The paint was arranged according to colour, the paper in tidy stacks and Gertrud D, not waiting for inspiration, but went straight to work.
Now the time is there for an extensive publication, a reflection on the work that documents the influence of the times and the environment and situates the work of Gertrud D.
The Art of Living
‘You are preparing for a situation all your life, because of who you are and what you have become. Everyone prepares himself in a different way. Some walk around singing, others sit quietly, but everyone looks for a moment of concentration. For me, one second may be enough. In that one moment everything comes together.’ Gertrud D enjoys her freedom as a thinker. She was formed by a brief, but intensive period at the Toneelschool Amsterdam, and it is through her involvement in the Actie Tomaat in 1969 that Gertrud D breaks away from prevailing traditional views in society. She works as an actress, improvises, designs stage settings and costumes and directs plays, but primarily her own life.
Concentration and Mysticism
Concentration is essential for Gertrud D’s work. She uses her concentration as an actress on stage, but also as an artist, by taking a sheet of paper and getting to work. Free and intuitively, by picking up a brush and tracing a line. Concentration leads to a moment of inner peace and inspiration that is also characteristic for meditation. Concentration is important for Gertrud D because it helps her to commit herself fully to her intuition. The form that emerges on paper is not defined or fixed in advance. The form appears. ‘When I am concentrated and when I see the white sheet of paper, I am totally unaware of the form that I am going to depict. Suddenly I just pick up a brush and depict the form.’ Her concentration can’t be controlled, she just lets it happen, but it takes a lot of hard work. ‘Continuity is important, you have to carry on working, to keep going. But if can also be refreshing to make nothing for a while, after which the concentrated energy suddenly bursts free.’ Finding a balance between the two is essential for Gertrud D.
In her work she always reveals something of herself, a part of her character. The deeper Gertrud D searches for her inner source, the closer she gets to the primal source of life, the source that people understand intuitively. She reaches a layer where people feel deeply connected with each other. You can recognize Gertrud D’s individual expression of this source in her work: it is situated at the level where people get to know each other and themselves. ‘Actually painting is nothing more than a quest for your own inner source, and that is why I’m not interested in making figurative work, I want to work from the source, that playful source in me, which gives me the sense that I am creating entire worlds.’
Recognition without knowledge of the meaning or the source is commonly defined as mysticism. Mysticism consists only of abstract images and has no concrete form. A mystical nature is not something you think up, it is a description of an inner experience and sensation. For Gertrud D this recognition is a way of looking at reality. For her mysticism has nothing to do with mystery or esotericism. Someone can see everything or he can see nothing at all. During each period of his or her life every plays a certain role, in which he is the centre of the world. In the press Gertrud D’s theatrical productions are described as mystical. Gertrud D herself comments: ‘I think that all of life is permeated with unconscious recognitions and experiences.’
Inspiration and Position
In the late1980s Gertrud D travels to Germany and sees an exhibition of the German expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. She is deeply affected by the brightly coloured work of Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc and August Macke. They felt that art should be an expression of the people and used their groundbreaking creativity, colourful inventions, and lyrical abstractions to achieve their aim. When Kandinsky accidentally put one of his own paintings on its side, he was surprised by what he saw. Seeing his own work from another perspective gave him new insights, proving that for him art was also a groundbreaking activity. Context, freedom, an open mind for the new and the will to change are typical of his work. The visit to the museum was an eye opener for Gertrud D as far as abstract art is concerned. She was struck by the similarity between the views of those artists and her own work for the theatre.
In the early 1990s Gertrud D begins to paint. Through Nico Delaive, an Amsterdam art dealer, she meets a second inspirational figure, the American abstract expressionist Sam Francis. He famously said: ‘Art is the Heart of the Matter.’ She immediately understands him. In 1973 Sam Francis travelled to Japan, where he made a film about Japanese Buddhists at work. After a moment of deep meditative concentration they paint a plate with a calligraphy brush. The artist meditates to prepare for painting. The moment of concentration that follows is not a question of duration, it is instantaneous. Then the artist takes a brush and traces a pattern on the plate or a sign on the scroll. The way Gertrud D works is very similar to these artists, they are kindred spirits. Gertrud D’s use of colour is influenced by the strangely complementary variegated colours and perfectly compact form of Japanese kimonos.
She develops a distinctive personal signature, which is clearly different from her source of inspiration. Expressive expressionist colour schemes with a meditative quality become her trademark style. She expresses different moods, states of mind or impressions in her work, without restricting herself to one style or one form. She works freely and intuitively.
Energy and Perception
‘A painting is a representation of my creative life force. The force from which I create the work. This force flows into the work. It tells its own story. It think it’s wonderful when people experience it in my work. I think it is a good thing when something comes out of the painting towards the spectator. If you are receptive to it as a spectator, if you open your mind to it, it gives me great satisfaction. I like it when spectators tell me that my paintings give them a feeling of energy.’ She presents us with sounds and feelings that are woven into a composition on the pallet like on a piano keyboard. With each new spill and downpour of dots and streaks the whole becomes more coherent, and more accessible at the same time. The images break out of the frame and move towards us. Worlds of colour and rhythm that always have something new to tell to anyone who enters them. They communicate energy.
Intuitive painting
‘I’m free, I do as I please. I have no obligations. I paint the forms and colours as I want them. Every work is an autonomous painting, and of course I don’t know in advance what the outcome will be. All the things I have done in my life have made me into the person that I am. The creative process automatically and in some way or other all the previous stages always return in my work.’
‘Sometimes the whole of life is present in an artwork and then I think it needs a little yellow, let’s see what happens, a small miracle takes place by adding a little light. At a certain moment you think, now I’ll take some purple, because the power that it manifests, giving it the right tension. That is what life is like, it is boring if everything is the same drab uniformity. So it needs that tension as well as the different vibrations that make life interesting. Life is all meditation, concentration and challenges.’
Schillers Formtrieb and Spieltrieb
The actual education of man is what interests Friedrich Schiller. The central question is: ‘How can someone become a free being who feels personally obliged to act socially and morally?’ Schiller seeks that answer to his question in art. Once man has found a basis for survival, he begins to express himself creatively and to embellish and adorn. Material existence produces an urge that compels man to act in that way. Schiller calls it Stofftrieb and distinguishes it from Formtrieb, the urge that comes from the intellect. The work of Gertrud D moves within the realm of natural urge and intellectual urge. It has to do with the primal feeling that is described so well by Schiller. From the moment that Gertrud D picks up her brush, a third urge is added, the urge to play or Spieltrieb. When creating her art Gertrud D experiences a feeling of freedom. In this respect her art should be considered as a bridge to a higher spiritual reality.
Of course there are different levels of development to be found in her work. What she is expressing is a process, based on the assumption that a person can’t see or recognise more than what he already has in himself. Everyone has learned to analyse, scrutinize with a critical eye and measure according to his own available standards. Here again we see Schiller surfacing; man has the ability to judge and to correct. That is reality.
Add Goethe’s colour theory, the experience of colour, to the theories of Schiller and the views on art theory of the anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner are born. Art continues nature’s work and throws a temporary bridge between the impossible and the unattainable. The perceptible world meets the spiritual world. This is exactly what happens to the viewer who is open to Gertrud D’s work.
The adventure of colour and form
Colour and form have everything to do with the feelings that Gertrud D expresses in her work. She gets into a certain mood, she feels she has created something that has to do with her personal source of inspiration. She highlights that image, she enhances what she sees in her head. Subject and form automatically rise up out of the colours. While she is painting, Gertrud D experiences the moment that the form becomes apparent and accentuates it. These forms are primal forms that keep coming back. They are not conceived in advance, she experiences them within herself while she is working.
Movement
Painter’s movements, brush strokes, surface texture and the rhythm in the work are also the result of the motion of the artist. That is why motion is a defining part of the personal signature of the artist. Forms that recur regularly in Gertrud D’s work are related to her movements. Sometimes Gertrud D uses a brush, at other times she prefers not to use it and to drip paint directly onto the paper. Each stroke of paint that she applies is a new, independent experience, an experience that adds something. She takes great pleasure in creating an order in the chaos of brush strokes. As a result, the paint, which is applied layer by layer, achieves growing unity and fullness. Sometimes it isn’t clear when a work is finished. Gertrud D can reach a phase when she becomes overly critical. Usually she lets go in time, but sometimes interesting flaws become apparent, so that the work, like life, is not perfect. The tension between Stofftrieb, Formtrieb and Spieltrieb has reached its optimal point.
Work 1992 – 2000
Gertrud D starts to paint in 1992. She develops a strong technical brush stroke that she applies in her abstract work of gouache on paper. She has no intention of making figurative work. She initially focuses on the form and uses soft colours. This eventually leads to a series of free, intuitive portraits. This is what she says about those works: ‘ When I started working with colours, I saw shapes appear through the layers which I then elaborated by putting down some lines. You can’t really call these early works figurative, I just enhanced the forms I saw. That is how those figures and objects came about. It is in the colours that an image appears, or a woman I see standing there. Those forms appear intuitively, in the deep recesses of my subconscious.’ She likes the portraits so much that during the following period she consciously makes a number of portraits of women which she heightens with old leaf. This series of portraits of women, two of which are reproduced in the book, are typical for the next stage in her development, in which she introduces a certain softness and sensuality into her work.
Colour explosions, spark showers and moving shapes emerge from a purely intuitive use of and sense for colour. Gertrud D uses a special technique. The works are rinsed in water, so that only the outlines of the acrylic paint remain invisible. Then she continues working a range of colours, for example blue, green or pinkish orange. The sparkling showers of colours and lines are a whimsical map of the labyrinth of our own fantasy, by the expression and energy that Gertrud D brings into the work, and that we, the viewers, feel so clearly. In her own words: ‘I take pleasure in every colour that is put on the canvas, it is all very intuitive and playful, or like Schiller says, Spieltrieb, to which Formtrieb is later added.’
Monochromes, works built up of different tonalities of one colour, evoke a different atmosphere than the colour explosions and spark showers. It is almost a cosmic experience, the colours as it where pull you into the fathomless depths of the work. This is caused by the contrast between light and dark in the work. Gertrud D allows the spectator to enjoy the pallet of colours she creates, with their many nuances and layers, it is not just a single colour, it is made up of many different lively facets.
Work 2000 – 2006
In 2000 the work of Gertrud D undergoes a change. The white background of the paper or canvas becomes part of the composition of form. The work emerges from exercises in deep concentration and from the restrictions she imposes on herself by working with only a limited number of colours. Tension is created by the accuracy of the strokes and the impossibility to make rectifications. The brush strokes have to be right the first time and achieve a harmonious relation.
Gertrud D does not think about the composition in advance, her approach to the work is intuitive. Every new form is an answer to the previous, and a connecting line marks the relation between forms. The interplay of harmony and tension between forms is essential. It is an approach that is regularly adopted by artists who are inspired by the manifestations and methods of Japanese Zen Buddhism. One of those artists is the aforementioned American abstract expressionist Sam Francis, whose working method has been an inspiration for Gertrud D. In their subject matter and their artistic spirit they meet each other, the Japanese calligraphers, Sam Francis and Gertrud D. They are kindred spirits.
In 2004 Gertrud D paints over some of her earlier work. For this purpose she uses pearlescent paint, which replaces the paper as a way to enhance form and brings out the texture of the paint in an interesting manner. From 2005 she uses pearlescent paint as a direct substitute for white paint. The pattern of lines could be compared to ballet. It is as if the lines are dancing as a result of the movement and accuracy of the pattern they form. The unparalleled rich colour sense is enhanced by the use of pearlescent paint, gold and other pigments, gels with different consistencies and structures, giving the paintings an interesting surface texture. Through that texture you can feel the power of the underlying forms. Through the mysterious openings in their structure, you can discover the underlying world of colours. The work refers to the layering she applied in her costume and stage design.s
* Drs. Frans Jeursen, Foreword Showers of Sparks, Gertrud D catalogue, p.4, 1998
Drs. Annabelle Birnie, Head of ING Art Management
Amsterdam, July 2006
I first met Gertrud D almost eleven years ago at Gallery Delaive in Amsterdam, where I was working at the time. She burst into the gallery like a passionate whirlwind and made no secret of her admiration for the work of the American abstract expressionist Sam Francis. It was great to talk with her about his work and even more so that she also bought it. Sharing a passion establishes a connection between people and art and is important for Gertrud D as well as for me. Later, when I decided to open my own gallery on the Keizersgracht after a short career at an auction house, I met Gertrud D again. She asked me to assist her with the preparations of her exhibition at the Van der Togt Museum and to lend a helping hand on other projects in the field of culture and art. It soon became clear that Gertrud D lived her whole life in a passionate way and that we, as three starting entrepreneurs in the same boat, could offer her our support. I have always admired her for her frankness and for the practical support she gave us. We had long discussions about art and about her own work, which we carried from one side to the other of her hot top floor of her house as if they were empty sheets of paper. The paint was arranged according to colour, the paper in tidy stacks and Gertrud D, not waiting for inspiration, but went straight to work.
Now the time is there for an extensive publication, a reflection on the work that documents the influence of the times and the environment and situates the work of Gertrud D.
The Art of Living
‘You are preparing for a situation all your life, because of who you are and what you have become. Everyone prepares himself in a different way. Some walk around singing, others sit quietly, but everyone looks for a moment of concentration. For me, one second may be enough. In that one moment everything comes together.’ Gertrud D enjoys her freedom as a thinker. She was formed by a brief, but intensive period at the Toneelschool Amsterdam, and it is through her involvement in the Actie Tomaat in 1969 that Gertrud D breaks away from prevailing traditional views in society. She works as an actress, improvises, designs stage settings and costumes and directs plays, but primarily her own life.
Concentration and Mysticism
Concentration is essential for Gertrud D’s work. She uses her concentration as an actress on stage, but also as an artist, by taking a sheet of paper and getting to work. Free and intuitively, by picking up a brush and tracing a line. Concentration leads to a moment of inner peace and inspiration that is also characteristic for meditation. Concentration is important for Gertrud D because it helps her to commit herself fully to her intuition. The form that emerges on paper is not defined or fixed in advance. The form appears. ‘When I am concentrated and when I see the white sheet of paper, I am totally unaware of the form that I am going to depict. Suddenly I just pick up a brush and depict the form.’ Her concentration can’t be controlled, she just lets it happen, but it takes a lot of hard work. ‘Continuity is important, you have to carry on working, to keep going. But if can also be refreshing to make nothing for a while, after which the concentrated energy suddenly bursts free.’ Finding a balance between the two is essential for Gertrud D.
In her work she always reveals something of herself, a part of her character. The deeper Gertrud D searches for her inner source, the closer she gets to the primal source of life, the source that people understand intuitively. She reaches a layer where people feel deeply connected with each other. You can recognize Gertrud D’s individual expression of this source in her work: it is situated at the level where people get to know each other and themselves. ‘Actually painting is nothing more than a quest for your own inner source, and that is why I’m not interested in making figurative work, I want to work from the source, that playful source in me, which gives me the sense that I am creating entire worlds.’
Recognition without knowledge of the meaning or the source is commonly defined as mysticism. Mysticism consists only of abstract images and has no concrete form. A mystical nature is not something you think up, it is a description of an inner experience and sensation. For Gertrud D this recognition is a way of looking at reality. For her mysticism has nothing to do with mystery or esotericism. Someone can see everything or he can see nothing at all. During each period of his or her life every plays a certain role, in which he is the centre of the world. In the press Gertrud D’s theatrical productions are described as mystical. Gertrud D herself comments: ‘I think that all of life is permeated with unconscious recognitions and experiences.’
Inspiration and Position
In the late1980s Gertrud D travels to Germany and sees an exhibition of the German expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. She is deeply affected by the brightly coloured work of Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc and August Macke. They felt that art should be an expression of the people and used their groundbreaking creativity, colourful inventions, and lyrical abstractions to achieve their aim. When Kandinsky accidentally put one of his own paintings on its side, he was surprised by what he saw. Seeing his own work from another perspective gave him new insights, proving that for him art was also a groundbreaking activity. Context, freedom, an open mind for the new and the will to change are typical of his work. The visit to the museum was an eye opener for Gertrud D as far as abstract art is concerned. She was struck by the similarity between the views of those artists and her own work for the theatre.
In the early 1990s Gertrud D begins to paint. Through Nico Delaive, an Amsterdam art dealer, she meets a second inspirational figure, the American abstract expressionist Sam Francis. He famously said: ‘Art is the Heart of the Matter.’ She immediately understands him. In 1973 Sam Francis travelled to Japan, where he made a film about Japanese Buddhists at work. After a moment of deep meditative concentration they paint a plate with a calligraphy brush. The artist meditates to prepare for painting. The moment of concentration that follows is not a question of duration, it is instantaneous. Then the artist takes a brush and traces a pattern on the plate or a sign on the scroll. The way Gertrud D works is very similar to these artists, they are kindred spirits. Gertrud D’s use of colour is influenced by the strangely complementary variegated colours and perfectly compact form of Japanese kimonos.
She develops a distinctive personal signature, which is clearly different from her source of inspiration. Expressive expressionist colour schemes with a meditative quality become her trademark style. She expresses different moods, states of mind or impressions in her work, without restricting herself to one style or one form. She works freely and intuitively.
Energy and Perception
‘A painting is a representation of my creative life force. The force from which I create the work. This force flows into the work. It tells its own story. It think it’s wonderful when people experience it in my work. I think it is a good thing when something comes out of the painting towards the spectator. If you are receptive to it as a spectator, if you open your mind to it, it gives me great satisfaction. I like it when spectators tell me that my paintings give them a feeling of energy.’ She presents us with sounds and feelings that are woven into a composition on the pallet like on a piano keyboard. With each new spill and downpour of dots and streaks the whole becomes more coherent, and more accessible at the same time. The images break out of the frame and move towards us. Worlds of colour and rhythm that always have something new to tell to anyone who enters them. They communicate energy.
Intuitive painting
‘I’m free, I do as I please. I have no obligations. I paint the forms and colours as I want them. Every work is an autonomous painting, and of course I don’t know in advance what the outcome will be. All the things I have done in my life have made me into the person that I am. The creative process automatically and in some way or other all the previous stages always return in my work.’
‘Sometimes the whole of life is present in an artwork and then I think it needs a little yellow, let’s see what happens, a small miracle takes place by adding a little light. At a certain moment you think, now I’ll take some purple, because the power that it manifests, giving it the right tension. That is what life is like, it is boring if everything is the same drab uniformity. So it needs that tension as well as the different vibrations that make life interesting. Life is all meditation, concentration and challenges.’
Schillers Formtrieb and Spieltrieb
The actual education of man is what interests Friedrich Schiller. The central question is: ‘How can someone become a free being who feels personally obliged to act socially and morally?’ Schiller seeks that answer to his question in art. Once man has found a basis for survival, he begins to express himself creatively and to embellish and adorn. Material existence produces an urge that compels man to act in that way. Schiller calls it Stofftrieb and distinguishes it from Formtrieb, the urge that comes from the intellect. The work of Gertrud D moves within the realm of natural urge and intellectual urge. It has to do with the primal feeling that is described so well by Schiller. From the moment that Gertrud D picks up her brush, a third urge is added, the urge to play or Spieltrieb. When creating her art Gertrud D experiences a feeling of freedom. In this respect her art should be considered as a bridge to a higher spiritual reality.
Of course there are different levels of development to be found in her work. What she is expressing is a process, based on the assumption that a person can’t see or recognise more than what he already has in himself. Everyone has learned to analyse, scrutinize with a critical eye and measure according to his own available standards. Here again we see Schiller surfacing; man has the ability to judge and to correct. That is reality.
Add Goethe’s colour theory, the experience of colour, to the theories of Schiller and the views on art theory of the anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner are born. Art continues nature’s work and throws a temporary bridge between the impossible and the unattainable. The perceptible world meets the spiritual world. This is exactly what happens to the viewer who is open to Gertrud D’s work.
The adventure of colour and form
Colour and form have everything to do with the feelings that Gertrud D expresses in her work. She gets into a certain mood, she feels she has created something that has to do with her personal source of inspiration. She highlights that image, she enhances what she sees in her head. Subject and form automatically rise up out of the colours. While she is painting, Gertrud D experiences the moment that the form becomes apparent and accentuates it. These forms are primal forms that keep coming back. They are not conceived in advance, she experiences them within herself while she is working.
Movement
Painter’s movements, brush strokes, surface texture and the rhythm in the work are also the result of the motion of the artist. That is why motion is a defining part of the personal signature of the artist. Forms that recur regularly in Gertrud D’s work are related to her movements. Sometimes Gertrud D uses a brush, at other times she prefers not to use it and to drip paint directly onto the paper. Each stroke of paint that she applies is a new, independent experience, an experience that adds something. She takes great pleasure in creating an order in the chaos of brush strokes. As a result, the paint, which is applied layer by layer, achieves growing unity and fullness. Sometimes it isn’t clear when a work is finished. Gertrud D can reach a phase when she becomes overly critical. Usually she lets go in time, but sometimes interesting flaws become apparent, so that the work, like life, is not perfect. The tension between Stofftrieb, Formtrieb and Spieltrieb has reached its optimal point.
Work 1992 – 2000
Gertrud D starts to paint in 1992. She develops a strong technical brush stroke that she applies in her abstract work of gouache on paper. She has no intention of making figurative work. She initially focuses on the form and uses soft colours. This eventually leads to a series of free, intuitive portraits. This is what she says about those works: ‘ When I started working with colours, I saw shapes appear through the layers which I then elaborated by putting down some lines. You can’t really call these early works figurative, I just enhanced the forms I saw. That is how those figures and objects came about. It is in the colours that an image appears, or a woman I see standing there. Those forms appear intuitively, in the deep recesses of my subconscious.’ She likes the portraits so much that during the following period she consciously makes a number of portraits of women which she heightens with old leaf. This series of portraits of women, two of which are reproduced in the book, are typical for the next stage in her development, in which she introduces a certain softness and sensuality into her work.
Colour explosions, spark showers and moving shapes emerge from a purely intuitive use of and sense for colour. Gertrud D uses a special technique. The works are rinsed in water, so that only the outlines of the acrylic paint remain invisible. Then she continues working a range of colours, for example blue, green or pinkish orange. The sparkling showers of colours and lines are a whimsical map of the labyrinth of our own fantasy, by the expression and energy that Gertrud D brings into the work, and that we, the viewers, feel so clearly. In her own words: ‘I take pleasure in every colour that is put on the canvas, it is all very intuitive and playful, or like Schiller says, Spieltrieb, to which Formtrieb is later added.’
Monochromes, works built up of different tonalities of one colour, evoke a different atmosphere than the colour explosions and spark showers. It is almost a cosmic experience, the colours as it where pull you into the fathomless depths of the work. This is caused by the contrast between light and dark in the work. Gertrud D allows the spectator to enjoy the pallet of colours she creates, with their many nuances and layers, it is not just a single colour, it is made up of many different lively facets.
Work 2000 – 2006
In 2000 the work of Gertrud D undergoes a change. The white background of the paper or canvas becomes part of the composition of form. The work emerges from exercises in deep concentration and from the restrictions she imposes on herself by working with only a limited number of colours. Tension is created by the accuracy of the strokes and the impossibility to make rectifications. The brush strokes have to be right the first time and achieve a harmonious relation.
Gertrud D does not think about the composition in advance, her approach to the work is intuitive. Every new form is an answer to the previous, and a connecting line marks the relation between forms. The interplay of harmony and tension between forms is essential. It is an approach that is regularly adopted by artists who are inspired by the manifestations and methods of Japanese Zen Buddhism. One of those artists is the aforementioned American abstract expressionist Sam Francis, whose working method has been an inspiration for Gertrud D. In their subject matter and their artistic spirit they meet each other, the Japanese calligraphers, Sam Francis and Gertrud D. They are kindred spirits.
In 2004 Gertrud D paints over some of her earlier work. For this purpose she uses pearlescent paint, which replaces the paper as a way to enhance form and brings out the texture of the paint in an interesting manner. From 2005 she uses pearlescent paint as a direct substitute for white paint. The pattern of lines could be compared to ballet. It is as if the lines are dancing as a result of the movement and accuracy of the pattern they form. The unparalleled rich colour sense is enhanced by the use of pearlescent paint, gold and other pigments, gels with different consistencies and structures, giving the paintings an interesting surface texture. Through that texture you can feel the power of the underlying forms. Through the mysterious openings in their structure, you can discover the underlying world of colours. The work refers to the layering she applied in her costume and stage design.s
* Drs. Frans Jeursen, Foreword Showers of Sparks, Gertrud D catalogue, p.4, 1998