April is the cruellest month...

again(!)



It has been two years now, since I started on this work. Click the label [W093] below for an overview of all the posts.

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Hands

The hands are so difficult to carve

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Matthaüs Passion

Both familiar and ever new, St. Matthew Passion is a major event in the cycle of the year. Good for contemplation, very inspiring. The altus of the opening chorale "O Lamm Gottes" sang with an intensity that worked like gilding on a Russian Icon, or on a medieval polychrome statuette. It gave me goosebumps.

I noticed a Green Man carved in the church benches.



Vegetation Spirit-oncoming resurrection-how fitting.


Fraser-Golden Bough
Holland boys Choir - Pieter Jan Leusink
Martinikerk Groningen
Matthaüs Passion


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Mother and Child -running for life

The folds of her dress are based on "Guelders" style of Medieval (polychrome) sculpture.

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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.


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Mother and Child - Refugees

 

Today - aka Holy Saturday - I made a start on a new work. Or rather, I started what had already started. After I had cleared the bad spots and worms' holes of this piece of oak I suddenly realized it was Her. Not the plaster Virgin but the archetypal Eleousa or Umilenie. The Mother, hurrying, one child on her arm, another, perhaps, well under way.

It's not just the Flight to Egypt, it is so much more. It is the Nakba, Darfur, Pogroms, Vertreibung. So many Mothers trying to protect their children.



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Raw material

 

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