Siemen Dykstra (Den Helder, The Netherlands, 1968)

At the end of the eighties I made my first series of landscapes in drawing-ink. It was a hesitating start. Up to then imagination and the story had been the most important ingredients of my drawings. It's true the interest in the landscape had been potentially present in my work, but it hadn't assumed a definite shape by then. Surely I felt a strong association with both the landscapes of Groningen and those of Drenthe, when I cycled through them at unseasonable times. These cycling-tours to friends living in the country of Groningen, to my grandmother in Drachten and my parents in Pesse led me back into the landscape in which I had grown up. Somewhat later after my ink-studies, the first colour-woodcuts having the landscape as a subject appeared. These landscapes still had a strong symbolic character and were of Scandinavian origin, but it did mean the beginning of this 'oeuvre'.

After my study at the Academy of Arts in Groningen I moved into the country of Southwest Drenthe, the landscape of my youth. The State Forestry woods, fens, moors with or without rush, soon became the basis of my work.
While cutting, printing and painting I experienced the landscape again.
In 1997 I got acquainted with Elysia during a course of private enterprise. We lived in the same village and had superficially met each other when letting out the dogs on the South Lheeder mark. Now that I am writing this it's more than 9 years ago.

The colour-woodcut (reduction-technique) and working-method.

The woodcut is a graphic technique in the process of which a drawing is cut out of a wooden plate. When inking the plate with an ink-roller the ink covers the wood-plate except for the cut-out parts. We call this therefore relief printing.

A colour-woodcut has been built up from various colours. For a Japanese woodcut one uses a different block of wood for each colour and the printing-process is fixed, for the wood-blocks are ready. The number of prints is thus flexible. My colour-woodcuts are reduction-cuts in the process of which I establish the number of prints beforehand. I use one plate of birch-plywood. First of all the drawing of the representation is put on it, then Ill roll the complete plate in the brightest ink-colour and put it in a mould and print it afterwards on paper. Inking and printing are repeated until the desired number of prints are being achieved. After this I'll make the plate ink-free so that the underlaying drawing emerges again. Then I'll cut away the parts on which the colour of the first printing-process has to be remained. I then apply a darker colour of ink for the second printing-process. Cutting, applying ink and printing are repeated with colours becoming darker and darker and after that with brighter colours a couple of times. My prints are thus built up from even 15 printing-processes. Each printing-process is a definitive step. You can't turn back. An advantage of the reduction-woodcut is that the printing-process is not fixed. Not much remains of the plate. In producing a detailed woodcut the cutting performs an essential part. For this purpose I'll use concave gouges with a U- or a V-profile. The ink I use is mainly etching and offset-ink (body-white). These inks are on a lineseed oil basis and fast-dyed. The prints are printed by means of an etching-press. The paper on which the print appears is from Japanese origin (washi). The paper-sorts manufactured either by machine or by hand consist of vegetable pulp.

I often thought about the question why I have chosen this time-consuming technique for rendering landscape-memories pictorially. There is probably a relationship between the layeredstructure of a woodcut and that of the subject. Out in the landscape I'll use pencil and aquarelle-gouache in order to make notes and possible set-upsfor woodcuts. In the natural and agrarian landscape of Drenthe I'll have a lot to do: the subject-matter changes continually and disappears at high speed. Thus I am in a hurry, cutting my life away....