World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 498 - Astrid van Rijn

World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 498 – Astrid van Rijn
In Galerie Mishmash in Rotterdam I saw works from the series ‘Koolstof’ (Carbon) by Astrid van Rijn. In black and white there were natural landscapes with hidden worlds in each work. They looked like photos, but you quickly saw that they were not photos. It had the atmosphere of the drawings of Gustave Doré, the French illustrator and engraver.

In the gallery I spoke with Astrid van Rijn about her work. She was a real draftsman and painter at the Academy, she says. “I was called a ‘painting beast’.” The academy was the Willem de Kooning Academy where she graduated in 1993 in the autonomous direction with drawing, painting and graphics.

The first photos
Ten years ago she started taking photos. It started with City Reflections. Reflections in windows and shop windows. She sees various often surreal worlds in reflections in the city. At the same time she also started taking nature photos. She says that she likes to walk in nature, including in Switzerland in the mountains and in botanical gardens. “The photos were quite good. I am a good observer. I got a lot of reactions to them. But I am not a photographer. I draw, paint and take photos. Then I thought: ‘How nice it would be if I could combine those’.”

It was a long search in which she experimented to the fullest. She soon decided that they had to be black and white photos. Black and white because she was concerned with structure and form and color would distract her. She started working on the printed photos, tape and chalk over them, cutting and pasting. ‘This is not it yet’ she concluded after a while. She also wanted to be able to draw on the photos. “At a certain point I decided to start building digitally with my photos.”

Drawing on photos
On the computer she started playing with her photos, sometimes with 20 at a time for a design of one landscape. She combined photos that were taken in very different places, for example in Switzerland, the Kralingse Bos, the Hoge Veluwe. It was a lot of practice.
“I created my own landscapes. ‘That’s interesting!’ I often thought.”
Sometimes it took a few days to finish the design of a landscape, other times a few hours. “I got better and better at it”.
Can digital work be printed on sturdy drawing paper? She ended up with a Fine Art Print, a good quality print of her digitally designed landscapes and at the same time very thick, beautiful paper to draw on.

Does Astrid have a key work?
In retrospect, several works she has made can be considered small key works. All those small key works have found their culmination in the theme CARBON.
How did she come up with this? “I am quite active on social media. I had already shared five or six works from the Carbon series on social media and was looking for an encompassing title for those works. I asked my followers: ‘come up with a title. The winner gets a photo’. There were many good and nice responses, including one from an artist and biologist. He came up with the title Carbon with the explanation ‘Without carbon there is no life; the Carbon cycle. The decay of layers of plant material. Life arises from that again. Just like the digital landscapes are also built up layer by layer. And drawing with charcoal. That is literally a stick of carbon.’”
That was at the end of 2018, beginning of 2019. “I thought and still think it is such a good name. Carbon can be found in all the works. My first solo exhibition with the carbon work was in 2019.”

Dramatic and romantic at the same time
There is development in the carbon work. “I am getting better and better. There is also development in the digital construction of the photos. I am looking for structures. I see what I can do with them sooner than before.” While taking photographs, she is already working on design, she says.

“Nature is my studio, my outdoor studio. The Palette”
She has been working on it for five and a half years now. “Carbon appeals to people. It is dramatic and romantic at the same time. When they see the work in real life, they see that there are many details in each work. I leave out people completely. It is a world where people have not yet been. Or more precisely: where people are actually not wanted, because they destroy a lot.” In the latest work, you do see the indirect result of human activity: former industry and factories that have been abandoned, overgrown by nature. “You see the resilience of nature.”
She concludes: “Nature, we can’t do without it. I live in the city, but I regularly seek out the silence. Then I can think, relax, recharge. With carbon I show how beautiful nature is and at the same time how cruelly humans can disrupt it in their desire to control everything. Which of course I also do indirectly when I create my Carbon landscapes. It is the desire for the primeval forest, which can proliferate, decay, rot, grow, bloom. The unexplored land.”

Other works
In addition to the Carbon series, she also makes other work. “Assemblies, for example, that can also give ideas for a new carbon work. Drawings full of color and City reflection photos. In all those different works you see my signature.”

 

https://astridvanrijn.nl/
https://www.instagram.com/mavrijn/?hl=nl
https://www.instagram.com/mishmash_rotterdam/p/DA72hUtIIQn/
https://www.facebook.com/astrid.vanrijn
www.artnomaden.com
Astrid van Rijn | LinkedIn
https://inzaken.eu/2024/11/19/het-koolstof-werk-van-astrid-van-rijn/