Thursday, 18 February 2010

Friday, 12 February 2010

Lectern





Oak, completed today.
Partly based on a lectern in the Hours of Catherine of Cleves




Mark the book on medieval Dutch sculpture. Very inspiring.







www.gafpa.nl

Tuesday, 9 February 2010

GAFPA goes official

My website has a new URL:

www.gafpa.nl

The old URL is no longer in use:

www.gafpa.tk


The name of this website was suggested by Flemish writer Willem Elsschot's prophetic novels about bluffing and conning . Written around 1933 and 1924/1938, they have lost nothing of their freshness. GAFPA comes from Kaas (Cheese) in which a middle class Belgian vainly attempts to bluff his way into the trading world by selling Dutch Edam Cheese. His firm needs a name and one afternoon's work results in the acronym GAFPA:
General Antwerp Feeding Products Association

GAFPA has that typical Dada-like association, making it the perfect name for my gallery.

Sunday, 11 October 2009

Reminiscences of childhood



It was a time when you could still park your car in front of the department store in the centre of town. No circular roads or circulation plans. Sunday afternoon, fivish, after dark. Return from a visit to our relatives in the southern part of town.
I used to look through the window of our Volkswagen Beetle. Neon signs, shop's windows, the church tower, statues.

Bronze statues.

The Big Nude Lass.

(My mother told me the locals called her so: t Grote Blote Wicht)

Their mother must be dead...

(I felt pity for them, every time we passed)

Is that a statue?

(It was, my dad told me)


But He looks so different there...

(a stern and grim Christ of the Sacred Heart, whitish sandstone)

Reminiscences of childhood. They have no order



www.gafpa.nl

Wednesday, 16 September 2009

Another flight to Egypt


Started April 2009
(Prepared the oak log, did some minor chipping to shape the heads)
I had already noticed that there was movement and speed in the accidental shape of the log. Mother and Child - on flight.
Eternal theme - mothers protecting children. Maryam and Yishua Ben Yussuf.
Read this book by Ilan Pappe about the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Same kind of picture but less speed.




I have observed them all summer, so it is about time I got them out of the woord.
But I don't know where to start yet.


www.gafpa.nl

Saturday, 5 September 2009

Black



"My hole is warm and full of light"
"Perhaps I like Louis Armstrong because he's made poetry out of being invisible"
Invisible Man [Ralph Ellison]



www.gafpa.nl

Monday, 31 August 2009